Introducing Jim Bennett and the CES Letter

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is Monday, December 28, 2020. We are about to conclude this year that has been terrible and wonderful for so many people. I am really excited for today's interview. This is someone I've wanted to interview for many years. I have a dear friend named John Henderson. He lives here in Holiday. He's been a faithful friend and even a supporter of Mormon Stories Podcast. And at least a few years ago, John reached out to me and said, john, you got to get to know this guy named Jim Bennett. He's super cool and he's the son of former senator Bob Bennett, and he's been, you know, responding to Jeremy Runnels CES letter. And he's a great guy and you should meet him. And so I knew about Jim Bennett even before he formally responded to Jeremy and then came on Bill Real's wonderful podcast and did this epic multi hour interview with Bill Real. And so I've wanted to interview Jim for a long time. So today we're going to be interviewing Jim Bennett. He is the author of A Response to Jeremy Runnels letter. But he's also just a great guy and he's also a friend of another dear friend of mine, Robert Reynolds. And he and Robert have been working on this film that's going to be released someday that's going to be super cool and important. But Jim Bennett is the author of A faithful reply to the CES letter from a former CES employee. And we've got Jim Bennett here in studios today. Jim Bennett, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Jim Bennett [00:01:36] Thank you, sir. Very nice to be here. Appreciate that.

John Dehlin [00:01:40] Yeah. And I should just say we met for the first time because recently with this fair Mormon sort of release of these new videos, Jeremy Runnels got this huge barrage of attacks, including claiming that Jeremy never actually sent a CES letter to anyone.

Jim Bennett [00:01:59] Right.

John Dehlin [00:02:00] Which was outrageous to me and to Jeremy. And I just always trusted Jeremy. So I reached out to Jeremy. He sent me his correspondence with the CBS director. I read it, I read the whole email string, including the attachments. But who am I? And so we met because Jeremy brought you and someone else into the studio and had you guys actually review the content. And I was really glad, one, I thought was super cool that you were willing to sort of be a witness for Jeremy. I was inspired by that little cheeseburger lunch you and Jeremy had. But I was also just really glad to meet you. So, anyway, what do you want to say to introduce yourself to our audience.

Jim Bennett [00:02:39] Well, I think you've introduced me pretty well. I don't. I, you know, I sort of stumbled into this whole world when I decided to respond to the CES letter. But it's introduced me to a number of wonderful people, including you and including Jeremy Runnels. It really surprises people when I tell people that I think Jeremy Runnels is a great guy. I disagree with him still. I'm still an active, believing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter

John Dehlin [00:03:07] Day Saints and a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Wait, the choir on Temple?

Jim Bennett [00:03:11] The Tabernacle Choir on Temple Square.

John Dehlin [00:03:14] Member of the choir?

Jim Bennett [00:03:15] Well, yes, we've all grown beards during the pandemic. We stopped posting pictures of the beards to compare them, which we would do that because it's no longer, it's no longer all that exciting and novel. It's been so long. We haven't met as a choir since March and I was in my first year of the choir when the pandemic hit. So it almost feels like a dream that I was in the choir. It seems so long ago. I can't wait for us to get back together again.

John Dehlin [00:03:41] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:03:42] So.

John Dehlin [00:03:43] Well, let me just say to our listeners, I'm going to just tell you what today's going to be about. It's probably going to be a multi hour interview, almost guaranteed. Here. Here's what we're going to cover. We're going to cover Jim's background and then we're going to cover two things. We're going to focus on where we agree in terms of how we view Mormon history, Mormon scripture, Mormon truth claims, etc. And we're going to talk about how Jim Bennett retains his faith in the Restoration after knowing all the information that's in the CES letter and digging deeply into it. So I'm going to title this episode something like Jim Bennett, you know, how to how to Remain a Believer after the CES letter. And we are not going to be contentious. We're not going to be debating or arguing. I don't do that when people come on Mormon stories, although, you know, I respect people that like to get in vigorous discussions. But I'm mostly interested in where we agree and then in how Jim retains his belief. And this is trying to honor what has often been on Mormon stories, this tradition of inviting people from all sides of the spectrum and providing support for people who want to stay in the church and providing support for people who want to leave. But I think people who have left and who don't believe are also going to just be interested in. In Jim's approach. Some may make fun of it, or some may find it refreshing, but the purpose is to have to build bridges and to have thoughtful, respectful dialogue. And that's the spirit of what we're going to do today. How does that sound?

Jim Bennett [00:05:15] That sounds wonderful, and I really appreciate that. I think it's essential that we can have conversations like that. That was. This may be jumping ahead, but when I. When I did the podcast with Bill Real, it was actually 14 hours. I'm amazed at how people come and say I've. I listened to all 14 hours, and I'm like, I haven't listened to all 14 hours, and I was there. But the thing. The thing that really frustrated me about that experience, that was brought about by somebody who said, I'd love to see you go toe to toe with Bill Real. And I said, I don't want to go toe to toe with anybody, but I will talk to anybody. Yeah, I'm happy to talk to him. And I quickly got a phone call from Bill Real, and he said, I'd love to talk to you. And so we did these lengthy podcasts, and there were six episodes, and they were each about two hours apiece, and I was very happy with them. And then they were all published at once. And then Bill Riel went all over the Internet and said, I won my debate with Jim Bennett. Look how I beat Jim Bennett. Every time I would express any degree of empathy for Bill Griel's position. If I would say, you know, I can see why you feel that way, and I can see why you believe that he took that as sort of a concession that I had thrown the church under the bus. And I just found that very frustrating. And we had one final episode where we went over that, and if you listen to that episode, it's a whole lot more contentious than the first six. Because what I said to him is, bill, you have made it far more difficult for anyone to have a conversation like this, because if everything is a debate and if everything is your agenda is to figure out a way to trip me up, then everybody's gonna be cautious and guarded when they talk to you. And I have great respect for people who have left the church, who come to different conclusions than I have about the same set of facts. But we need to be able to talk to each other. And I think that's a huge problem on both sides. I look at the whole Desnat experience, and I look at them and think, these are guys that believe that Jesus spent all of his time with a cat o nine tails driving people out of the temple. That's the only tool in their arsenal.

John Dehlin [00:07:41] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:07:42] And I just don't think that that's. That's a great way to. To build the kingdom. I don't think that's helpful to anybody. And my father always used to say it's. It's a lot harder to hate somebody once you get to know them.

John Dehlin [00:07:56] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:07:57] And I think we need to get to know each other. And then I don't think it helps anybody if we. If we. If we hate each other, if we. If we fight.

John Dehlin [00:08:06] Well, let me just say, number one, Bill Real, I love you. And rfm I love you. And Katie And Alan Mount, I love you. The work that's done with r. With marriage on a tightrope and then Bill Rles podcast, you guys are all legends. And so I have tons of respect for you, as I know Jim, you do, too, or you wouldn't have gone on.

Jim Bennett [00:08:22] No, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:08:23] So.

Jim Bennett [00:08:23] So I don't want to rfm, but I have met Alan Mount, I think very highly about.

John Dehlin [00:08:28] And I just want to say I love all you guys, and this isn't like some sort of, like, I'm doing it better than Bill. I love Bill. Go listen to Bill's thing. I. I'm. I'm guessing, as we all would, if Bill could do it over, there are things he might change. And, you know, I don't know. I just want to say I'm glad you can come on. And Bill Real, I love you, and let's do our thing.

Jim Bennett [00:08:50] Right?

John Dehlin [00:08:50] And Bill Real, you keep doing your thing, and we'll all grow and learn as we go.

Jim Bennett [00:08:56] And I don't want this to sound like a huge indictment to Bill Real, because actually, a lot of people have listened to that, and I've gotten really positive. That's how I met Robert Reynolds.

John Dehlin [00:09:06] It was a huge deal at the time.

Jim Bennett [00:09:08] He called me and said, I listened to the whole thing, and I think it's wonderful. And that's how I got involved in that project with Robert Reynolds.

John Dehlin [00:09:14] So, yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:09:15] So, yeah, I just.

John Dehlin [00:09:17] More dialogue is better.

Jim Bennett [00:09:18] More dialogue better.

John Dehlin [00:09:20] I'm sure Bill learned some things and you learned some things, and let's just keep. Let's keep dialoguing, Correct?

Jim Bennett [00:09:26] I agree. Absolutely.

Jim Bennett's Personal Background and Story

John Dehlin [00:09:28] All right, so let's start out with your story. I mean, I'm. I know you're interesting enough to where we could go 10 hours just on your story, but let's. Let's do your story. But the stuff that Particularly feeds into your evolution. That would lead you to want to respond to the CES letter. And I love politics. So if you want to talk about your dad some, that's awesome.

Jim Bennett [00:09:48] Sure, sure.

John Dehlin [00:09:49] Because your dad's kind of a legend.

Jim Bennett [00:09:50] Well, I think so. He passed away four years ago, and he's really been the model. My patriarchal blessing at one point, and I said this at his funeral, my patriarchal blessing says, remember to love your heavenly Father as you love your parents, for their lives are entwined together, as you've been taught. And I have thought about that numerous times in my own faith journey, that when I have difficulty connecting with the divine, when I feel distance from my heavenly Father, I can imagine him in the likeness of my own father. That's how wonderful my own father was. And. And I miss him every day. And so I look to him as an example on a number of things, but also an example of somebody who had a vibrant faith that was not afraid to confront difficult issues. I think one of the reasons your title of this segment is after the CES letter, one of the reasons why.

John Dehlin [00:10:58] Belief. Yeah, Belief.

Jim Bennett [00:10:59] After the belief after the CES letter. One of the reasons why I've been able to retain my faith is that I had somebody who had the ability and willingness to talk about these things and to confront these things with me and approach them without judgment. I never felt like when I would go to my father, hey, tell me about the Kinderhook plates. I don't understand this. There was never any kind of judgment or concern that I shouldn't be even thinking about these things, and it was dangerous to confront these. He went into this with his eyes wide open, like to think that I have, too. And I get that from him.

John Dehlin [00:11:39] Beautiful.

Jim Bennett [00:11:40] So I look to him as the example there, but I, you know, I. Not to name drop, but this is part of my. My faith journey, is that I grew up with a sense of expectation. My father's grandfather was Heber J. Grant, and my mother's grandfather was David O. McKay. Whoa. Yeah. And so I grew up thinking, that's royalty.

John Dehlin [00:12:02] You're Mormon royalty.

Jim Bennett [00:12:03] There you go. Mormon royalty. Except I didn't feel like Mormon Roy. I grew up in Southern California. A lot of people assume that I grew up in Salt Lake City, but my family didn't move to Salt Lake City until after I graduated from high school.

John Dehlin [00:12:17] What was your dad's profession?

Jim Bennett [00:12:20] Dad had the weirdest, wildest career. He worked for Howard Hughes.

John Dehlin [00:12:26] He knew Howard Hughes.

Jim Bennett [00:12:27] He never met him or spoke to him, but he was His PR director.

John Dehlin [00:12:30] Nice.

Jim Bennett [00:12:30] That's how strange it was. Bob lived in Vegas, right?

John Dehlin [00:12:35] Wrong. Where did Howard Hughes live?

Jim Bennett [00:12:37] Howard Hughes lived in. Well, there's a fun story here. My father used to be the undersecretary in the Department of Transportation in the Nixon administration. And when he left, he still had contacts there. And the Hughes organization called him. Howard Hughes was one of his clients in his PR firm, my father's PR firm that went bankrupt after Watergate. We could spend 10 hours on his much more interesting career than mine. But he got a call from the Howard Hughes people saying, howard Hughes is flying to London and doesn't have a passport. Can you call the Department of Transportation and allow him to land? And he called the Department of Transportation. They said, he can't go unless he has a passport. They won't do that. And they called back and said, sorry, he can't go if he doesn't have a passport. They said, no, you don't understand. He is flying to London right now and he is going to land. And so dad called the government and wrangled with them, and they said, okay, well, he can land, but if he doesn't show up at an embassy and get a passport within 24 hours, he will never be allowed to re enter the country. And he didn't show up to get a passport, and he never reentered the country.

John Dehlin [00:13:52] Oh, wow.

Jim Bennett [00:13:52] Howard Hughes died in Bermuda and flew to Texas. And they say he died in the air, but they said that for legal reasons, he was already dead when he was on the plane. But Howard Hughes's entire inner circle were Mormons. They were the only people he trusted. And my father's missionary companion was one of his close buddies. And when dad went Belly up in D.C. with his PR firm, he was hired to be Howard Hughes's PR guy in Southern California. I was six years old when we moved to Southern California. Okay, So I grew up there. And then Howard Hughes died. And dad ended up being the PR guy for the Osmonds during the Donny and Marie years. And Donny Marie show was canceled. And then dad tried to do a whole bunch of startups that all went nowhere. And then he ended up being hired as the first CEO of what's now Franklin Covey.

John Dehlin [00:14:45] Nice.

Jim Bennett [00:14:47] And that brought him to Utah right after I graduated from high school. So that's his career.

John Dehlin [00:14:53] But

Jim Bennett [00:14:55] I grew up in Southern California, and I was away from the whole Utah scene. So the idea that I was David O. McKay's great grandson or whatever else wasn't a big deal to Anybody except for me, because I always felt like, geesh, I have these prophets that are my ancestors and here I am, just this stupid schlub and I serve my mission in Scotland. And I actually served in Thurso, Scotland, which is the northernmost point of the British mainland.

John Dehlin [00:15:25] Scotland's a tough mission.

Jim Bennett [00:15:26] It is a tough mission. It's a. It's a cold mission.

John Dehlin [00:15:29] Yeah. Not a lot of open people, right?

Jim Bennett [00:15:33] No, no. Well, my understanding too, is that I have a lot of friends who are still there. Facebook's been wonderful because I reconnected with all these people I never thought I'd talk to again. But they tell me that there are probably half as many active members in the congregations in Scotland as there were when I was there. 30 years of imploding, so. So that's a real challenge. And we were. I was sent to Thurso, which is where the McKay's came from. Yeah, that's right. It's where David O. McKay's grandfather joined the church. And the house where he joined the church is still standing, at least sort of. It's a stone croft, and was able to visit that. But while I was up there, you know, we didn't have anybody up there hardly. We had a. We met in a community center with three active members. And so we got permission to do a kind of fireside about David O. McKay up there. We thought that might attract some attention. And I don't even think we ever went through with the fireside. But my. My grandfather was writing a book about his father, David O. McKay. It's called my father, David O. McKay, and it was edited by Lavina Fielding Anderson, which is interesting. But they sent me a copy of David O. McKay's Missionary Journal for part of this. And I remember reading that and

John Dehlin [00:16:50] being

Jim Bennett [00:16:50] really surprised by how lousy a missionary David O. McKay was. I mean, he was frustrated, he wanted to go home, he missed his girlfriend, he would take days off and tour whiskey factories. He would do all this stuff and, you know, he'd say, this is. These are haggard people. And I'd sooner die than distribute tracts. And that was such a breath of fresh air to me because I grew up with the sense of expectation because you're sort of taught that these men are born fully formed in perfection, walk on air. And they walk on air and discover that David O. McKay was a frustrated young missionary like I was.

John Dehlin [00:17:33] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:17:34] And I thought that's a much better story, you know, if David O. McKay can be David O. McKay, starting where he did. And there's hope for Jim Bennett. Right. So that was a big, I mean, that was a huge thing for me in terms of my understanding or appreciation of church leadership and church leaders, because I think we do a huge disservice to members of the church when we put these men on a pedestal.

John Dehlin [00:18:01] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:18:01] Just one other story about my father. He had a brother who left the church and my brother, my uncle, had been writing priesthood manuals for the church and had some run ins with the quorum of the 12 and was frustrated to see what he saw as infighting within the quorum of the 12.

John Dehlin [00:18:18] The sausage gets made, basically.

Jim Bennett [00:18:19] Yeah, he got frustrated by how the sausage gets made. And my father found himself, this is before my father was a senator or anything like that. But he found himself in the Hotel Utah lobby with Harold B. Lee. And this is when Harold B. Lee was president of the quorum of the 12. He was not president of the church, but he was the head of the correlation department. And Harold B. Lee said to him, whatever happened with your brother? And dad explained what happened. And Harold B. Lee, he said, got visibly angry and he says, oh, come on, that's a terrible reason to leave the church. Doesn't he realize we're just men? Since I can understand people overseas putting us on that pedestal, but he should know better. He says, we're men who are doing the best we can, but we're just men. And that story resonated with me. I think so many of our challenges and problems with the church go away. If we can charitably interpret the actions of the leaders of the church who are just men who are doing the best they can, we can sustain them. And I think that's where the word sustain comes from. You know, you, we don't talk about sustaining Jesus. Jesus doesn't need our sustenance. We sustain things not because they are perfect, but precisely because they are not.

John Dehlin [00:19:38] Right.

Jim Bennett [00:19:39] So anyway, we can come back.

John Dehlin [00:19:40] I want to come back. I want to come back to that because I think you probably agree that they often, maybe too often encourage that type of worship intentionally or unintentionally. It's kind of like we're special witnesses of Christ.

Jim Bennett [00:19:54] Right.

John Dehlin [00:19:55] You know, and, but we'll, we'll come back. I don't want to get off into that, but.

Jim Bennett [00:19:58] Well, so, so let me back up. So my own personal story. I, I, I grew up in Southern California. I was an active member of the church. I, all my friends went to byu. I decided not to. I was going to be a world famous actor. And so I wanted to go Go to the University of Southern California.

John Dehlin [00:20:13] Nice.

Jim Bennett [00:20:14] Yeah. It didn't happen, but I am, however, if you check out that masterpiece of Mormon cinema, the Home Teachers.

John Dehlin [00:20:22] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:20:23] I'm the first person who gets home taught. Oh, fun movie.

John Dehlin [00:20:26] Fun. Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:20:27] Kurt Hale, who's actually. He was in my. He's in my ward and he says, jim, I got a part for you. It's a total burnout. You're perfect. Like, oh, thanks a lot, Kurt. That's great. So you watch that movie and. And they come and they home teach me, and then they launch a turkey out my window.

John Dehlin [00:20:43] Remember that?

Jim Bennett [00:20:45] It's. It's not a good movie.

John Dehlin [00:20:46] It's fun. It's. That was a magic time in Mormon cinema.

Jim Bennett [00:20:49] It was.

John Dehlin [00:20:50] It was Richard Dutcher and all that stuff.

Jim Bennett [00:20:52] Yeah. I think I killed it, though. The Home Teachers didn't do well, so it was all because of me.

John Dehlin [00:20:57] Okay.

Jim Bennett [00:20:58] But I was at the University of Southern California and I was struggling with whether or not I was going to go on a mission. The idea of going on a mission interfered with my plans for stardom and a number of other things. But I started listening to a radio show called the Bible Answer man with Dr. Walter Martin, who had written the Kingdom of the Cults. And I was listening to this and getting frustrated and angry because I thought, well, what he's saying can't be true. That isn't right. And I would listen just kind of to get angry. And I decided. I went to the University of Southern California library and checked out a copy of the God Makers, which was Jeremy Runnels gets Mad when I say this, but I think it was the CES letter of its time.

John Dehlin [00:21:49] Well, okay, I see why he gets mad. Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:21:51] Well, and we've had.

John Dehlin [00:21:52] We've had Ed Decker on Mormon stories, if you want to go back and understand what that means. We played sections of the God Makers, but it was an anti Mormon movie. Yeah. And. And a lot of people have left the church take umbrage at that term, anti Mormon, because it oftentimes is used as a pejorative to dismiss us and say that we hate the church, we hate Mormons. And I think Jeremy likes to be viewed as a truth seeker that was trying to get earnest answer, you know, answers to earnest questions.

Jim Bennett [00:22:19] Right. But.

John Dehlin [00:22:20] But anyway, I see what you're saying in the sense that it had. It had traction. It. You know, growing up in the 80s, I grew up in Katy, Texas, and the God Makers was huge. And so I think what you mean by that is kind of awareness. Broad.

Jim Bennett [00:22:37] Right.

John Dehlin [00:22:38] Awareness within the church.

Jim Bennett [00:22:39] Right, right. But at the same time, a lot of the issues that are in the CES level are in the God Makers, too.

John Dehlin [00:22:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:22:45] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:22:45] Yeah, yeah. Listing the issues.

Jim Bennett [00:22:47] Listing the issues.

John Dehlin [00:22:48] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:22:49] So I, I, I read that and was really rattled by it. I, Back then, I don't think the term faith crisis was, you know, common parlance, but I, that's essentially what I experienced.

John Dehlin [00:23:04] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:23:05] And I went and talked to my, to my father about it. I talked to my uncle about it. My uncle. I was living with my aunt and uncle at the time in Los Angeles, and he was the stake president in Los Angeles. Wonderful man, Howard Anderson. I don't know if you know him, but he's since passed away. But I talked about this frustrated, and my reaction to it wasn't, I need to leave the church. My reaction was, how do I stay? Because I felt like a chump. I felt like an idiot. I felt, how is it that I grew up in this church and I didn't know any of this? And, you know, I'm being played for a sucker and I want to stay because I feel like I've had these experiences. I feel like I have this connection to God that I found in this church. But how can I stay knowing this church is all these terrible things? And I went home for Christmas my freshman year of college. And for what year would this have been? This was 1987. Who are about the same age? Yeah, I think I'm about a year older than you. I'm 52. Yeah, I'm 51. 1987. And I went home for Christmas, and for whatever reason, they were passing out copies of a book called the Truth about the God Makers by Gilbert W. Sharfs.

The CES Letter's Origins and Reputation

John Dehlin [00:24:25] Remember that?

Jim Bennett [00:24:26] And I just, I read that and I ate it up. And the thing that was, that was remarkable about it is not that answered all the questions and, you know, left me, you know, with an unaltered faith, exactly as before. I had read the God Makers. What it showed me was somebody can. Somebody else has confronted these things, somebody intelligent, somebody thoughtful, and it hasn't driven them out of the church. And so what it did was it sort of put a brake on my panic. It was, okay, I may not have all the answers, but other people have been able to wrestle with these and still come out with faith on the other side. And it gave me time, it gave me patience with myself to be able to take the time to find the answers for myself. So, I mean, I couldn't tell you what the line by line response to The God Makers was anymore, I can't remember any of the details. I do remember that it was a different approach than Jeremy's approach in that the God Makers was trying to tell me that I was part of a satanic cult and I needed to be an evangelical Christian. Whereas the CES letter doesn't really take that kind of approach. It just sort of lays out all of these problematic things and lets you draw your own conclusions. So I can see why Jeremy might be frustrated with my comparing the two. But that's where I found out about polygamy in all the detail, where I found out about the Kinderhook plates and a number of other things that shook me up at the time. So anyway, from that point on, I was a fairly orthodox member of the church and didn't really think that I had consider anything unusual about the kind of faith crisis that I had experienced. But when I read the CES letter, I had a cousin that is a friend of Jeremy's that left the church and wrote his own sort of manifesto that reads very much like the CES letter. I mean, I think as I told Jeremy when I met him, if you hadn't written this, somebody else would have for sure. And in fact, somebody else has.

John Dehlin [00:26:38] Other people have, yeah, there's letter to my wife, there's a letter to an apostle. Right. There's Mormon think like almost every ex Mormon I've ever met has written some 40 to 80 page documentary to send to all their family. Jeremy, Jeremy just happened to throw it into a PDF and put it on the Internet.

Jim Bennett [00:26:58] Right. I mean, Jeremy and he did a

John Dehlin [00:27:01] good job with graphics and that and, you know, thoughtfulness.

Jim Bennett [00:27:05] He, I mean, he, he tapped into something that, that is very real out there. There are a lot of people that have had that same experience and that. I think Jeremy gave a voice to them. Yeah, but when I read the CES letter, I got God Makers flashbacks. I read this and I went, oh yeah, this is something that I read about in the God Makers and this and that and the other. And for about 10 years I've been maintaining a blog that would cover politics and pop culture and religion and I would write little essays about religion. And I had just lost my job when I was reading the CES letter, and so I had some time on my hands and I looked at it and I went, oh, I wrote about this in my blog. And so I would cut and paste pieces of my blog in response to the CES letter. And then I thought, well, I'm in for a penny. I Gotta be in for a pound. And then I just went in and just sort of line by line decided I wanted to pay Gilbert W. Sharfs forward. I was writing it envisioning somebody else like my 18 year old self who felt like a chump after reading the CES letter. I didn't write it to try to convince Jeremy Runnels to come back to church, and I didn't write it to convince anybody really of anything. I wrote it to say, this is how I do it. This is how I've confronted these issues. These are the answers that I have come to, and whether or not you accept them, whether or not you agree with me, that's fine. Hopefully I can be a model for somebody else out there who wants to see how do I confront all these issues and come out with a testimony on the other side. And so I published it on the 1st of April of 2016, which again is not something you ought to do. If you want something taken seriously, don't publish it on April Fool's Day. And it exploded all over ex Mormon Reddit. And I got all kinds of nasty comments and I had somebody in a private group say, whatever you do, don't go into exmormon Reddit, they're really shredding you over there. And so of course I went into ex Mormon Reddit, said, hi, it's me, I'm the guy you're talking about. And it was really delightful because the minute you show up, the minute you say, hey, I'm going to engage with you guys, a lot of the nastiness stops.

John Dehlin [00:29:28] They respect you.

Jim Bennett [00:29:29] Well, it's just human beings. It's much easier to trash me when I'm the nameless face of some guy who wrote something. But when I show up and I'm there and I'm in your face, you have to engage with me as a person. And people in and out of the church generally are decent people who do that, who are willing to engage with you one on one. And so I had a pretty good experience doing that. And since then I've gotten all kinds of feedback from people and it's been positive for the most part. You know, I just recently, one of my sons, I have two, I have twin boys that are serving missions right now. They were both sent to different missions in Argentina and then Covid happened and they've been reassigned, once in Cincinnati and ones in Tampa Bay. But one of their friends, one of his fathers, one of his fathers, he only has one father, as far as I know. A friend's Father, a friend's father, one of my son's friend's fathers, said that his son on a mission in Texas, that all the missionaries had been assigned to read my CES letter reply by their mission president. Because. Because the CES letter was exploding all over the place down there, and they said, this is the only thing that helps. And so I get. I get all kinds of emails from missionaries who are reading this, who find it helpful. So. So that's been a good experience. But, you know, I get criticized because I'm an apologist for the church, and that's really not the way I see myself. I don't see myself as defending the church at all costs, no matter what. I just see as myself as being in a position to be able to say, this is how I did it. This is how I confronted these issues and came out with a testimony on the other side. And I really feel strongly that it's essential that we start confronting these issues. And I think that may be where you and I have a whole lot of common ground, is that there are so many people who are afraid to look at church history or afraid of what they might discover, afraid of something they don't know that they feel might have to drive them out of the church. And I think when we were growing up, the church was able to sort of shield its members from a lot of that. Unless you were a dumb kid who went into the USC library to check out the God Makers, you could go through your life without hearing about any of these issues. And that's not the case anymore. Anybody that has an Internet connection and just starts typing in any keywords that have anything to do with the church is going to have all of this stuff come up in the first search. And so we don't have the luxury, whether we want to or not, of shying away from tough questions and shying away from these issues.

John Dehlin [00:32:42] Amen.

Jim Bennett [00:32:44] So I really feel strongly. I've had a lot of people, Jeremy, actually, in the first time, when we were exchanging emails. That's kind of a fun story. After I finished the Bill Real podcast, I got a really nasty email from Jeremy Runnels. I'd never met him. And he just said, I just. You really embarrassed.

John Dehlin [00:33:04] What was he mad about? What was he mad about?

Jim Bennett [00:33:05] Well, he wasn't mad in this email when we actually met and talked. We. We talked about the things that he was mad at because I felt very strongly when I wrote my reply that I was going to be very critical of what I consider to be bad arguments. But I was never going to be critical of Jeremy Runnels as a human being. I think I fall short of that in my second version more than the first. The first version, I really scrupulously went out of my way to approach Jeremy in good faith and talk to him. And, you know, it's written as if we know each other, and it's a reply directly to his letter. But I never call him names. I never get personal with him, you know, but I am snarky and I'm sarcastic with his arguments, and I felt like that was a line that I needed to respect. And I. Everybody who accused me of attacking Jeremy, I said, could you please tell me where I do that so that I can take that out of my reply? Because that is not my intent in any way, shape, or form. No, he wasn't mad at me in that first email. He was, oh, you made a fool of yourself. You went on Bill Real and your shelf is sagging, Jim. It's very clear that. And he said, and you don't realize that your legacy is driving people out of the church because they read your CES letter reply. And my arguments are so much better than yours because my CES letter reply has the entire CES letter in it. It's line by line, the CES letter. And then my. So anybody who reads my reply de facto reads the CES letter, too. He says, you're driving people to all this, and you're driving them out of the church. And I look at that and I say, well, you know what? We don't have any choice at this point. I don't think that staying away from the CES letter protects anybody's faith, because if you're going to lose your faith from reading the CES letter, then your faith isn't solid enough. You need to read the CES letter and figure out your own faithful response to it, your own faithful approach to all of these problematic issues. But we went back and forth with these sort of nasty emails, and I finally said, look, wouldn't this be more fun over burgers? I'm buying. And that completely disarmed him. And then he was like, oh, yeah, okay, sure. And when we met up, we spent three hours together, and it could have been longer if we didn't have to leave, but it was just delightful. I just thought, this guy's a great guy. And he came and had a very similar experience to my own experience. But, you know, he reached out to somebody who didn't respond. He reached out to the CES director who didn't respond to him.

John Dehlin [00:36:05] And you can confirm that he did.

Jim Bennett [00:36:07] And I can confirm. I know.

John Dehlin [00:36:09] Tell the audience what we did.

Jim Bennett [00:36:10] Yeah, yeah. So Jeremy, Jeremy, a couple of weeks ago asked us to get together and confirm that there really was a CES director. So I sat in this room and I looked at his emails and read the whole exchange. I, I can identify the CES letter. CES director. He's asked me not to say who

John Dehlin [00:36:29] it is out of kindness. Out of kindness to respect the guy.

Jim Bennett [00:36:32] And that, that's what's amazing to me is, is that, is that Jeremy doesn't gain anything by not. Yeah. Throwing this guy under the bus.

John Dehlin [00:36:40] Right. But he gets skewered for.

Jim Bennett [00:36:42] But he gets skewered. Oh, there really wasn't a CES director and this was all just this big fake. I mean, I, I, one of the reasons why I felt so strongly when I met with him, when I identified with him, when I felt like we had this connection, is because I think his experience was very much like my 18 year old experience reading the God Makers. But he ended up not getting the kind of support that he would have needed to stay in the church and decided that he couldn't stay. And I respect that decision. It's not my decision, and I hope it's not the decision of other people, but I respect people who arrive at different conclusions than I do. So, yeah, that was a really remarkable, remarkable experience. We had a great conversation and it's one of the things that really frustrated me about these recent videos from Fairmormon. I'm quoted in these videos up, down and sideways. They said, well, Jim Bennett and his reply says this, and Jim Bennett says this. And I got a lot of messages from people saying, were you involved in this? They're quoting you. Did you have anything to do with this? And I was embarrassed by them. I put out a Facebook statement saying I don't like them and I don't like the fact that they're attacking Jeremy Runnels personally. And I really didn't like the Inglourious Basterds video where they, you're the one who's getting beaten to death in that clip from the movie. And Jeremy Runnels is labeled as somebody standing on the sidelines crying because he's going to be next. That's just. Who on earth thinks that that's an appropriate way to build anybody's faith? And where is your faith if you think that that's a great way to represent the restored gospel of Jesus Christ? That didn't make any sense to me. And so when Jeremy reached out and said, could you come on and confirm that there really was a CES director, I jumped at the chance. I was very grateful that he would have enough confidence in me to be able to do that, because I still very strongly disagree with Jeremy Runnels in the conclusions that I've come to about these issues. But the idea that anybody would threaten him personally is just a terrible indictment, I think, of where we are as a culture where we think that that's acceptable.

Responding to the CES Letter and Its Motives

John Dehlin [00:39:09] So, I mean, I think that's where I wanted to begin. Thank you for that background. And I think that's kind of where I wanted to begin as we dive into the meat of the discussion is that, you know, whether it's Hugh Nibley or Daniel Peterson or Kwaku or Cardinalis or John lynch, these guys, where they often begin, again, whether it's with Fawn Brody or with the Tanners or with Jeremy or with me or the September six, they often want to begin by undermining the character of the critic by calling them liars, by calling them adulterers, by calling them gay, calling them child abusers, whatever they can do to. And by the way, John lynch and Scott Gordon, you see their responses to people criticizing these recent videos, and their responses are, jeremy's a liar, John de Lin's a liar. Because that's one approach, and that's a classic approach. That. And I hate to say this because I. I don't ever like to call the church a cult, but if you look at what Scientology does with their fair gaming approach, it's. And I. My goal is for the church to never be anything like a cult. That's my goal. I want the Mormon.

Jim Bennett [00:40:23] This is. I'm going on record.

John Dehlin [00:40:25] I want the Mormon Church to never act like a cult, ever. And I try never to call the Mormon Church a cult because I know it's offensive, and I don't think it helps anyone, but that's a tactic that. That cold. That. That cults use to defame their critics. So I'll start off with this question. When you look at the motives of Von Brody, the motives of Sandra and Gerald Tanner, the motives of the September six, my motives, Jeremy Runnels motives. And I'll add, because I think this is the most important thing, the motives of the tens or hundreds of thousands of people that have had these same questions, what do you want to say about. I know you can't speak for all of us, right. But just in general, this. This idea of attacking the intent or the character of the people questioning. What's your approach?

Jim Bennett [00:41:12] Well, I think it's lazy for. First of all, I don't know your motives. I mean, I can. I can guess at your motives. I can guess at anybody's motives. But all that does is distract from the argument. It demonstrates that you don't have a strong enough argument. If you can't refute what Jeremy Runnels is arguing, then you attack him personally and say he's a terrible person and don't even bother reading him because he's the worst person that ever lived. That's not just the actions of a culture. I mean that. I see that in politics all the time. You know, that's absolutely something that happens all over the place in politics. I watched my father deal with that. You know, I ran his final campaign.

John Dehlin [00:41:58] He seemed to have a lot of dignity, your father. I didn't see him as getting in the mud.

Jim Bennett [00:42:02] No, he didn't. He didn't. And what's remarkable is that he was given all kinds of opportunities to do so. And I can remember counseling him in his final campaign, which he lost. You know, if you don't do this, this, this and this.

John Dehlin [00:42:18] He lost to Mike Lee, right?

Jim Bennett [00:42:19] He lost them. Well, yeah, he lost in the convention and Republican convention. In the Republican convention. And then Mike Lee went on to win the primary against Tim Bridgewater. But yeah, and I said, if you don't do this, this and this, dad, you're gonna lose. And his response was, yeah, that I lose. Says I'm not willing to go there in order to be able to just to win another chance character. He's the example to me on that.

John Dehlin [00:42:48] So he inspires your approach in apologetics.

Jim Bennett [00:42:51] Yeah, he does. And in fact, in that last campaign, he published a book called Leap of Faith, Confronting the Origins of the Book of Mormon. And it was his toe in the water of apologetics. And he talks about. It's a wonderful book and it's also a very boring book in spots because he wrote it for a non Mormon audience. He thought that with Mitt Romney running that there would be this huge, huge audience for Mormon stuff that wasn't there. He wrote it hoping it wouldn't be published by Deseret Book, and that's who ended up publishing it. And so he summarizes the Book of Mormon in it. Yeah, they're long passages where he tells you what happens in the Book of Alma that I just. Your eyes glaze over as you read it. But. But some of it's really fascinating because he talks about his experience working with Howard Hughes. And he talks about the forgeries in the Hughes organization, the Mormon will, Melvin Dumar will, and also the book that was written.

John Dehlin [00:43:54] People trying to get Hughes's inheritance.

Jim Bennett [00:43:56] Right. People trying to get Hughes's inheritance.

John Dehlin [00:43:57] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:43:58] But he contrasts the Book of Mormon with these other forgeries and shows how the Book of Mormon. So he takes this very sort of. And he's willing to allow the critics of the Book of Mormon to have their say. And he doesn't attack them personally. And he goes through this. He talks about Fawn Brodie. Fawn Brodie, I think, is my second cousin once removed.

John Dehlin [00:44:21] Right. Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:44:22] I'm not quite sure how I'm related to her, but somehow I am.

John Dehlin [00:44:26] She was David O. McKay's niece.

Jim Bennett [00:44:27] She was David O. McKay's niece, and he was my great grandfather. So somebody else can do the math. But. But what? I don't know. Nobody knows anybody else's motives.

John Dehlin [00:44:39] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:44:40] I mean, that's really. You just have to take people at face value and deal with them in good faith. And if you're attacking their motives, you're losing. You've lost the argument. You don't have an argument.

John Dehlin [00:44:49] But also, you would probably even let's. You know, I wanted to focus on where we agree. Would you agree that members, especially our age, have not been taught the actual factual history and that the church probably didn't do a good job of incorporating a more factual history into its curriculum and. Or maybe even whitewashed and. Or punished people who tried to raise these issues? And in that sense, maybe the members weren't well served by how the church handled its history for a century or so. How would you respond to that?

Jim Bennett [00:45:32] No. I remember talking to Jeremy about this at lunch. At lunch. And I said, to some degree, when you walk into a job interview, you want everybody to see the best side of you, and you don't want anybody to see the worst side of you. Yeah. And so you don't necessarily lie. You just emphasize all the things that make you look good and you don't talk about the things that don't make you look good.

John Dehlin [00:46:03] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:46:05] I think that's how humans function, and I think that's how organizations function. And I think to a large degree, that's how the church has functioned. I really push back at the idea that the church has been deliberately deceptive, that the church has gone out of its way to lie to its members and tell them things that aren't true. But I very much believe that the church didn't want to talk about things that didn't make them look good.

John Dehlin [00:46:30] And I hope I framed the question that way.

Jim Bennett [00:46:32] I think you did. I think you did. But when people tell me the church was lying to me all this time, I think, no, it was putting its

John Dehlin [00:46:41] best foot forward and avoiding the issues that could cause people not to believe. And all I'm saying is, in that process, members went for decades not knowing the church's real history.

Jim Bennett [00:46:54] I think. Well, the full history. Full history. The church, to its credit, I feel it's important to emphasize this, too. The church, to its credit, is getting a lot better at that.

John Dehlin [00:47:06] Yeah. Now.

Jim Bennett [00:47:07] Now, I think the Joseph Smith papers are a remarkable historical project.

John Dehlin [00:47:12] Right.

Jim Bennett [00:47:13] You know, you talked about Scientology earlier. There's no way you're going to see Scientology go through the life of L. Ron Hubbard the way the church is now going through the life of Joseph Smith. Right. So, yeah, I like to see improvement. I would like to see more improvement. But I think it's fair to say, yes, we grew up at a time when a lot of things weren't talked about. That is not to say they weren't allowed to be talked about, because I talked about them with my family and I talked about them with my father. But in private. Yeah, I can't remember. I can't remember a lot of Sunday school lessons about the Rock and the Hat. For instance, interestingly, my mission president, my second mission president was Joseph Fielding McConkey.

John Dehlin [00:47:55] Oh, yeah.

Jim Bennett [00:47:56] Who was Bruce, our son, and loved him, Adored him. And he had a marvelous sense of humor, which surprises people. You don't think of the McConkeys as being people with a great sense of humor, but he was very warm and had a wonderful sense of humor. But the first time I really heard about the Rock and the Hat was from him and from his insistence that it didn't happen. Right. And I didn't see that as a lie, because I believe he firmly believed

John Dehlin [00:48:25] it didn't happen because his dad and

Jim Bennett [00:48:28] his dad and his grandfather insisted that that came from David Whitmer years after the fact and that they weren't. And so that's what I believed about it. And then when the church came out with their essay and I read that and I went, oh, okay. But it didn't bother me. It was just. So when you start to say, okay, well, the church has been lying to its members, you're starting to judge the motives of the church in a way that I think is not charitable, because I don't think that anybody has been lying to anybody deliberately.

John Dehlin [00:49:02] Except for when, Joe. Well, except maybe when Joseph Fielding Smith. We'll get to the First Vision.

Jim Bennett [00:49:06] Oh, when he.

John Dehlin [00:49:07] When he hid the 1832 account of the First Vision. Ripped it out of the.

Jim Bennett [00:49:11] Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:49:11] I mean, that. That. Would you agree that's problem. And only taping it back in once the Tanners let everyone know that.

Jim Bennett [00:49:23] Right. Well, I want to be charitable to Joseph Fielding Smith. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:30] I'm not saying condemn anyone. I'm just saying that's problematic.

Jim Bennett [00:49:33] That's problematic.

John Dehlin [00:49:34] That's all.

Jim Bennett [00:49:35] Well, what's so funny to me, too, again, is that I look at the different First Vision accounts, and they don't bother me at all.

John Dehlin [00:49:41] Right, we'll get to that.

Jim Bennett [00:49:42] We'll get to that. But. So. So I look at that and go, you didn't need to do that.

John Dehlin [00:49:46] Right.

Jim Bennett [00:49:46] You didn't help anybody by doing.

John Dehlin [00:49:48] Yes, and my only point. My point isn't to condemn the brethren here. That's not what I'm trying to get you to do.

Jim Bennett [00:49:54] Right.

John Dehlin [00:49:54] It. The opposite of maligning the character of the critic is to say, no, these issues are legitimate. Like, not you. Not. That's not to say you agree with me and Jeremy and our conclusions. It's to say when people have legitimate doubts, it's for understandable reasons.

Jim Bennett [00:50:17] Right.

John Dehlin [00:50:17] And that's what. I just wish Fair and Daniel Peterson and those guys would just start with that. I just. I just wish apologists, instead of saying, you're a child molester and you're a pedophile and you're a liar and they're all evil people. John Dillon, Jeremy Runnels, Tanners, you know, whoever, Fawn Brody. It's just like. No, no, no, listen. There have been problems. People were acting in good faith. They had good intentions, but this wasn't. You know, we all learn everyone's imperfect. Just like you started, right? Talking about general authorities. People were doing the best they could at the time. They had good intentions. But there are legitimate reasons why people are doubting and struggling. And here's a way to still believe. Like, if you could just start with that. Not a condemnation of the brethren, but just an acknowledgment of the problems. I think that's a really solid foundation that we can both agree on. And then we can go on and say, well, how do you stay. That's all I'm. That's all I'm trying to get you, to maybe see if we have common ground there.

Common Ground and the Case for Belief in God

Jim Bennett [00:51:17] We have a lot of common ground there. There's nothing in that that I can disagree with.

John Dehlin [00:51:21] With.

Jim Bennett [00:51:21] And I've been very Frustrated with recent efforts. And I don't want to be too critical of the brethren here, but there have been recent talks that I feel like, you know, shame a doubter. If you're a doubter, there's something wrong with you. Yeah, you know Elder Renlund's talk where he likens the doubter to the kid, gets thrown overboard, gets picked up by an old fishing boat, but then gets mad that the boat only has imperfect.

John Dehlin [00:51:51] Got some rust.

Jim Bennett [00:51:51] It's got some rust. And it doesn't have Perrier. It only has dirty water. So there was an actual cartoon where they throw them back out to the sharks. And I thought, you know, I, again, I understand why they're doing that, but I don't think that's helpful to anybody.

John Dehlin [00:52:05] It's demeaning.

Jim Bennett [00:52:06] I don't. Well, I don't see any doubter watching that going, oh, I'm not going to doubt anymore. Yeah, I see a doubter watching that and they feel stupid and belittled and, oh, that's not somebody I can talk to about my questions. Now, Elder Corbridge's talk, I talked about this in my discussions with Bill Real, but Elder Corbridge's talk, where he defines, you've gotta have a testimony of the primary issues before you can even look at the secondary issues. And I thought, who gets to decide what's a primary issue?

John Dehlin [00:52:36] Right.

Jim Bennett [00:52:37] Cause that may not be a primary issue for me, but I read that Joseph Smith's married to a 14 year old girl and suddenly that's a primary issue. And no, no, you got to find out whether he's a prophet before you could even look at that. Well, how am I going to get a testimony that he's a prophet if I think he's a pedophile? You know, I have to understand, you have to meet me where I am. And the church, again, I think is getting better at that. But there are instances where these talks, for instance, where they're not necessarily getting better at that. And so I don't think acknowledging somebody's doubt is the same thing as acknowledging that the church is not true. Right. If I have a problem with the rock and the hat, and I come to you and I say, well, I can understand why you would have a problem with the rock in the hat. That seems strange and that's maybe different from what you heard. And all of a sudden, okay, well then I feel heard now and I can continue to talk about it and I can work through my doubt.

John Dehlin [00:53:40] Exactly. That's what I'm saying.

Jim Bennett [00:53:41] And it Shows, I think, a lack of confidence, Right?

John Dehlin [00:53:45] Yep.

Jim Bennett [00:53:45] You know, Jeremy begins the CES letter by quoting J. Reuben Clark. You know, if we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed. Yeah, I firmly believe that.

John Dehlin [00:53:56] Right.

Jim Bennett [00:53:57] And so somebody comes and says, I'm investigating. We use the word investigator to talk about people who are looking into the church. If members of the church become investigators and they want to know about all of these things, then we ought to stand ready to be able to approach them where they are. And we, we. We undermine faith when we say, oh, we just can't even ask those questions. There's something wrong with you for even asking those questions. And that's that. That doesn't do anybody any good. Love it.

John Dehlin [00:54:29] Well, to me, that's a solid foundation. I think that's a good jumping off point for us to kind of start digging in. Is that okay?

Jim Bennett [00:54:34] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:54:35] Okay. So I want to begin kind of at the very highest level. I want to begin with God. And this isn't going to follow the exact outline of the CBS letter, but we'll get to most of the points in the CES letter. But that's fine. I think it all begins with God. So I'll lay out the. The problems that I just, at a high level, lay out the problems that I see, and then we'll have a dialogue about God and we'll talk about Jesus, and then we'll get into the restoration. Is that okay?

Jim Bennett [00:55:00] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:55:00] Okay. So we're taught in Mormonism that God is anthropomorphic, that God is once, it was once a man, that God's an exalted man, that he is at least married to one woman, if not multiple women, and that he's all powerful and all loving, basically, or maybe not all powerful. We can talk about that. But basically, if people have problems with God, it's that I talk to. It's usually around this idea that there's so much suffering and so much pain in the world, so many problems, you know, that God's going to help a Mormon find their keys, but a young girl in Africa is going to get raped and killed. Like this idea of an anthropomorphic God that answers your prayers and that cares about some little girl in Utah, but doesn't care about someone in Africa, that's just too problematic. And that God, if there's a God at all, and probably half or more of the people that leave Mormonism no longer believe in God, if there's a God at all, it's got to be some nature or some power, but way more nuanced and powerful than this man with a beer, white man with a beard in heaven who's like, trying to micromanage everything. And then there's so much stuff that's messed up.

Jim Bennett [00:56:15] Right.

John Dehlin [00:56:16] So, I mean, how do you deal with. With what are. Just in a brief couple minutes, what are your beliefs in God, and how do you reconcile some of those problems?

Jim Bennett [00:56:24] Well, you know, I wrestled with that kind of exactly in those terms. And for a while, I actually came to the conclusion that, what if there is a God and he's a jerk, right. Or he plays favorites, he doesn't care about me.

John Dehlin [00:56:42] Right.

Jim Bennett [00:56:43] You know, I went through periods of unemployment. My daughter was injured. And, you know, those are the times, difficult times, when you reach out. And, you know, I would reach out and feel like there isn't anybody listening, there is anybody paying attention to me. And if God is just one guy and he's just a human with a beard exactly the way you describe, maybe he just doesn't have time for me. Or he plays favorites, and it's like, how can he not play favorites and does all this kind of stuff? And so I sort of wrestled with that. And during that time, I actually threw out the idea of praying in King James English. You know, the idea, this is how you pray and you use thee and thou, and we thank thee, we ask thee. Because that was so distancing for me, I felt like, okay, if there's a God, I want to talk. And this God loves me as much as I'm being told he does. I want to talk to him, and I want to talk to him, and I want to have a conversation with him. And my best prayers are done when I'm walking my dog and I'm out in the middle of nowhere and I'm screaming at the sky, I sort of went through that. And I mean, in terms of if you're looking for a sort of specific kind of apologetic description of an anthropomorphic God that I have figured out, I don't know that I have that for you.

John Dehlin [00:58:25] No, I'm not looking for anything.

Jim Bennett [00:58:26] I just want to hear how you. No, but one of the ways that I've come to reconcile suffering and God's omnipotence, being able to coexist, comes very much in a Mormon theological framework. Because if we are of the same species of God in the way that we describe that and so many other traditions do not. The idea that we are trying to become like God, that we lived with him before we came here, and that there is a piece of us that is co eternal with Him. That's something that I really hold on to. That's something that is so remarkably and largely uniquely Mormon. Then this is the process. Suffering is the process by which we become more like Him. I go back to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. And I think, is there any father in the world that, if it were possible, wouldn't have made it possible for Jesus to be able to accomplish that without the infinite suffering that he had to endure? And so if he has to endure that infinite suffering, I can sort of understand that suffering is the process. Mortality is about suffering in the sense that we learn from it and grow closer to God. And through all of this, I felt like I established a connection with the divine, with God. That does not mean that I saw him on his throne and that I can testify in the way that Joseph did that he is a physical being standing in front of me. But I am confident he's there and he listens to me and is aware of me. I don't know how that works. I don't know how you reconcile that with anthropomorphism or any of that, but the Mormon theology formed that connection. The idea that understanding that I am a God, an embryo, that I am of the same species of God, helps me remove the distance between him and me. And so I look at that very much. I see the church as a vehicle that connects people to God, and I see the Book of Mormon as a sort of divine access point. One of the reasons I stay in the church is that it's the Book of Mormon where I have found, I think, the greatest counsel, the greatest connection spiritually to God. And so I look at that and say, okay, this is where I found the connection, and this is where God wants me to. We may be jumping ahead a little bit here, but one of the most powerful experiences that did that for me was in the wake of the 2015 November policy. Prior to that, I had been as reasonable and orthodox a member of the church on LGBT issues as you could ask for. I had written blog entries railing on gay marriage and talking about how making all kinds of arguments for we're not really being exclusionary by doing all these sorts of things and defending the church in any way I possibly could. And then November policy broke, and something broke inside me. I wouldn't say my shelf broke, but something broke. It was just so clear, crystal clear. That the church was wrong, this was absolutely wrong. And how do I reconcile that? How do I stay in a church that is so clearly, fundamentally wrong on this issue? And I had really long walks with my dog wrestling about this. And Joseph Smith describes the experience of receiving revelation as having pure intelligence flow into you. And I have had that experience maybe once, maybe a few other times, but on this occasion, I received what I believe to be a revelation that God was aware of me, that God was aware of the issue, and that God loved me, and that I was not to leave the church, that this is where I needed to be, and this is where God felt like I could do the most good. And if I had to put it into words, the words would be something along the lines of, be patient, it will all work out in the end. But that one experience really sort of reframed my entire perception of what revelation is, what a connection to God is. Because now I read the Doctrine and Covenants, and I imagine Joseph Smith receiving these flows of pure intelligence and having him try to clothe them in language. And something is always lost in the translation. You can't. I can't encompass that experience in language. I can't tell you exactly what that was like, only to know that I felt a connection, I received a revelation, and that's what keeps me grounded in the church. Yet I recognize that there are imperfections, I recognize there are problems, and I recognize all of that. But I feel like the only way that you can come to terms with the reality of God is to connect directly with God. And I would like to see more members of the church recognize that they have as much direct access to heaven as Russell M. Nelson does. And they forget that we think that we go through the prophet to approach God and we don't. We go to God directly. He doesn't play favorites, and he's willing to answer my prayers just as much as he's willing to answer Russell Nelson's prayers. So.

Suffering, Prayer, and God's Omnipotence

John Dehlin [01:04:27] So if somebody comes to you and says, jim, listen, I pray I don't hear an answer, or they say, I've seen too much pain and suffering in this world to be able to get behind an anthropomorphic God at all, maybe there's some power, energy, maybe it's nature, but the. The Mormon idea of an interventionist, male, white, male, bearded God, I just can't do right, and I don't know that I can ever do. And I don't even know. I can't even tell the difference between just my own psychology, my own thoughts and and whether that's actually a divine thing or just like thoughts that come into my head. So if I have to sign up for the Joseph Smith correlated Bruce Armor Conkie version of God, it's kind of a nonstarter.

Jim Bennett [01:05:16] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:05:16] And if I have to think that God's all powerful and a white bearded male, it's kind of an on starter. The best I can do is just have hope that there's something and sometimes I feel good things and I'll call that God. But I may never get any anywhere more than that, you know. And again, Joseph Smith's teachings about God was so specific and anthropomorphic and the temple is so specific and anthropomorphic. What would you say to that person that says can I still be a member if I just can't sign up to the Mormon version of God?

Jim Bennett [01:05:53] As far as I'm concerned, of course you can still be a member.

John Dehlin [01:05:57] And then how do they do that and reconcile what the brethren have taught and what Joseph taught?

Jim Bennett [01:06:02] Well, reconciling with what the brethren have taught and what Joseph taught, I mean, I don't feel like anything I believe about God is out of step with any of that in any kind of significant way. When you talk about an interventionist God, I've had to sort of wrestle with that in the sense that I believe in an interventionist God where we are the intervention, where we are sent here to be the intervention. You know, God can cure hematomas, but he still tells us to go to the doctor. God, you know, we each have skills and talents that can benefit and lift and bless the lives of others. And that's the purpose. We're all supposed to do that. And we fall down and we don't intervene as much as we need to. But I don't know where I stand. I think if you're, if you're looking for a God that is going to shield you from suffering and correct magically errors or accidents, I don't know that I can sell that God to you. And I'm not sure if I believe in that God. I believe in a God that functions in a different context. You put suffering in an eternal context and recognize that yes, you've seen so much suffering, but God is the one you turn to to alleviate it. I leaned on when my daughter was injured. My oldest daughter was in a skiing accident. She tumbled 300 yards down the side of Solitude Mountain and had a burst fracture in her spine that's left her partially paralyzed from the waist down. And during that time I was leaning on a statement by Carlford Broderick. Do you know Carlford Broderick? He was a stake president in Los Angeles. He wrote a book that was published by Deseret book called My Parents Married on a Dare. And he tells the story of a Standards night. You remember Standards night?

John Dehlin [01:08:12] Sure.

Jim Bennett [01:08:13] And the Standards night was modeled after the wizard of Oz. And everybody. The gospel is the yellow brick road, and the temple is the Emerald City. And you go down the Emerald Road, you reach the Emerald City, and you live happily ever after. And he said afterwards that the Relief Society president turned to him and said, do you have anything to add, Brother Broderick? And he said, yes, I did, and she's never forgiven me since. And he said, I don't want you to believe that if you live your life as wonderfully and as well as you think you can and are, that your spouse is never going to be unfaithful to you, that your children are never going to leave the church, that someone isn't going to be horrifically injured or killed in an accident. And the line that I have memorized and is seared in my brain is, the gospel of Jesus Christ is not insurance against pain. It is resource in the event of pain. And then when pain comes, be grateful that you have that resource to deal with your pain. And so I would. I would try to say, I cannot sell you a God that is going to intervene and eliminate all of your pain and eliminate all the suffering and eliminate all of the injustice and do any of that. The God I am selling you is a God you can turn to, that you can lean on when the pain comes, because you're here in mortality primarily to experience pain. This is why you are here. And God is the one that you lean on when it comes. And if you turn to me after that and say, well, I still can't believe, and that still doesn't work for me, my reaction is, well, then I'm going to continue to love you and support you and sustain you for the wonderful person that you are, and it's up to God to reveal himself to you. The only way that I can sell God to you is if God does it, not if I do it.

Personal Faith as a Sustaining Force

John Dehlin [01:10:15] I love that. But for you, a belief in God has been a sustaining, nurturing part of your life.

Jim Bennett [01:10:21] It absolutely has been. But it's taken me a long time to get there. My. My daughter's accident, which was nine years ago, almost 10 years ago now, was a moment in my life where I didn't realize that I thought this way, but I did. And that was that. I thought living a good life and paying my tithing and doing all the things right, nothing like that would have happened to me. I really firmly believe that. And it was amazing to me how many other people in their reactions, in their well intentioned reactions to her injury, sort of were saying the same thing. Well, you know, maybe this will all be for the best and all this kind of thing. And I don't think of it in that. I've learned an awful lot from that experience and I'm grateful for the things that I've learned, but I don't think it's all for the best. If I could go back and undo that, I would undo it in a heartbeat. There isn't anything I wouldn't do to undo that. But that shattered the idea that, that good Latter Day Saints can't have bad things happen to them. And we don't explicitly teach that, but we do implicitly teach that. We do implicitly sort of imply that in this there is safety, in this there is peace. Keep the commandments. That's the old primary song. Well, what's the safety? Is the safety that terrible things aren't going to happen to you? No, the safety is that you will have a resource in you will have an ally that you can lean on when the bad things come, because they will come regardless of how righteous you live.

John Dehlin [01:12:05] I love it. I love it. So, okay, that's good. That's God. One down. No, but that's great. That's, that's beautiful.

Jim Bennett [01:12:13] Well, can I ask you where you are in terms of that?

John Dehlin [01:12:17] Oh, wow. We get to go back and forth. Forth.

Jim Bennett [01:12:18] Well, I don't know, I don't know. I, I, I mean, I, I've heard you, I mean you talk about, you're not sure if there's, if Jesus was even a historical figure or any of that.

John Dehlin [01:12:28] No, I'm actually. Oh, well, we'll get to Jesus in a second. But yeah, I'll, I'll briefly talk about that. I, I, I've never identified as an atheist. This is another area where fair Mormon has lied to so many people. I've never once in my life called myself an atheist, ever. And I've never once called myself an agnostic, although someone could put that label on me because I really don't think anybody knows for sure. And that's the thing that one of the things that tripped me up in my testimony was I just, I always wanted to know, like I really wanted to know if the church was true.

Jim Bennett [01:13:01] Right.

John Dehlin [01:13:02] And my, my Seminary teacher and others would tell me these stories of, like, I was in the temple and an angel came and visited me, or I was reading my scriptures and they lit up and I saw, you know, and. Right. Joseph Smith story. I'm like, oh, I want one of those. And so. But then we're told that an evil and adulterous generation seeking the sign, and I'm like, well, I want to know. And so I did Moroni's promise, and I never got the answer right. And I got warm, fuzzy feelings. And so that was like, my testimony was like, these testimony meetings were people's arms, you know, where the hair on my arms stood up and I got a tingle down the back of my neck. And so like, well, that's my testimony. And then I'd feel that watching the Muppet movie, and I'd be like, oh, my gosh, wait a minute. Well, and then I'd learn that other people in other religions got the same feelings. And this is something Jeremy talks about in the cs, right? And this is this whole epistemology of like, you know, something. Because you felt it didn't make sense to me. Even though I was like, zone leader before, a year into my mission and a branch president twice on my mission, I was.

Jim Bennett [01:14:03] Where to this day?

John Dehlin [01:14:05] What's that?

Jim Bennett [01:14:06] Where was your.

John Dehlin [01:14:06] I was in Guatemala. But to this day, I've never tried alcohol. I've never tried tobacco. I've only had sex with my wife. Like, I'm so Mormon in so many ways. Nobody can take my Mormon card from me. I don't care what fair Mormon wants to say. I really tried to get those answers. And I. And I. I did what they said. And I. And I just, you know, I remember that moment on my mission where I'm like, well, I. I still haven't gotten that witness, other than the tingly feelings which other people get in other faiths. So I'll just start saying, I know because that's what missionaries do, and somehow I'll talk myself into it. But that lasted through my mission when I was in this bubble. But once I got to BYU and started reading Sunstone and talking to these liberal professors, the whole idea of a one true church thing based on my feelings just unraveled for me. So that goes that. That went all the way to Jesus, all the way to the God, and it didn't make it. So I'm like, there is no God. How could anyone say that? And I didn't go to the point where I. There's no Jesus or there was never A historical figure. I've never once maintained, ever, that there was no historical figure named Jesus.

Jim Bennett [01:15:11] Ever.

John Dehlin [01:15:12] I don't. You know, but. But I've interviewed Bart Ehrman, and I've got his point of view on that. But the truth is, I don't think anybody knows. And no, I don't identify as an agnostic, even though that's basically the definition of agnosticism. But I do believe that when I've done good things, I've felt power and influence supporting me. I believe that in Mormon stories. And then the church excommunicates me. So, like, it's. So I just think we're all trying to figure this out, and we need a lot of love and charity in or out of belief. We just need lots of space. And honestly, if you listen to my excommunication recordings where I have these dialogues, my stake president was just not willing to, you know, if I once said, I don't know if there's a God, or if I once said, I'm not sure Jesus was anthropomorphic, he was ready to skewer me, you know, because he didn't like the podcast. You know what I mean? But the truth is, I don't know. And I respect people that believe, and I respect people that don't, and I just think there should be a lot of latitude for people figuring stuff out. And sometimes I think there's meaning and purpose and power that you can tap into. And sometimes I don't know. And. And. But I. But I act as though there is a power and there is an afterlife, and I act as though there's meaning and purpose. And for me, faith is just believing that life has meaning and purpose, and we don't quite know what that is, but we're all trying to do good. And someday we'll either figure it out or we won't be around to know, but we'll see, you know, it's kind of like, we'll see.

Jim Bennett [01:16:40] Yeah, but I haven't closed any doors. Well, you're living Pascal's Wager to some degree still. I mean, that's.

John Dehlin [01:16:46] It's. But it's not conscious. Like, if I die tomorrow and there's nothing, I'm not playing some game. I'm just open. That's it. I'm just open. And it's. For me, it's not Pascal's Wager because I'm not motivated by this. Like, oh, my gosh, if there's a judgment someday and God condemns me because I didn't believe, I'm just going to go and say I believe so that, you know, I don't, I'm not interested in a God like that. That's going to be like, wait, did you have enough belief in the unseen so that. Then I'm going to let you in. Like, I've got no interest in a guy if that's God, not interested. But, you know, but, but, but, but I am staying open. And so for those who want to call me an atheist or, you know, whatever, that's not me either. I just, I don't know. But I'm, I'm going to believe that life has meaning. I'm going to try and alleviate suffering, which is really my core motivation. I'm going to believe that there's truth or that we, we're better off when we root ourselves in truth, and then I'm going to act accordingly. And so I'm, I'm grateful that you would even ask the question. And I'm grateful that I get a sense that you can hold space for someone like me and, and not denigrate me. And I, and honestly, I think there's a lot of people in the church and out of the church that view things a lot like I do.

Jim Bennett [01:18:05] No, well, I, I didn't hear anything in there that I would really disagree with either.

John Dehlin [01:18:11] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [01:18:12] You know, I, I tell people very often that one of the things that's very attractive about the church to me is that the core of universalism that's in the church. Yeah. And that we shy away from. But why are we doing temple ordinances for every single person that's ever lived on the planet?

John Dehlin [01:18:32] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [01:18:32] If we don't think we can save every single person that's ever lived on the planet.

John Dehlin [01:18:35] Right.

Jim Bennett [01:18:36] So I absolutely think that experience that you've just described is the experience of people in, out of the church, all over the place. And I think that there needs to be room for it and space for it because I think to a large degree there's elements of it that are universal to all of us. All of us continue to struggle, all of us continue to reach, to try to find faith. And we all come to different conclusions. But one of the things that's so attractive about the church to me is that we make allowances for that, even if individually there are times we fall short. If a church leader comes and says, well, no, we can't have space for

John Dehlin [01:19:10] you,

Jim Bennett [01:19:12] I think that church leader is probably making a mistake. And then we have to have enough grace to be able to recognize that church leaders are as fallible as the rest of us.

John Dehlin [01:19:26] Yeah. And honestly, if I'm being totally charitable with my stake president, I think that he was doing what he was told by people above his pay grade. And that's not even to condemn those people. Like, I think the church didn't know what to do with the Internet and they were seeing all the, in this, I was before Jeremy Runnels, you know what I mean? And I think they were seeing all these people, all this hemorrhaging and they didn't know what to do. And so I know for a fact that there are stake presidents and bishops all over the church that are like, I don't care if you believe in anthropomorphic God and if you don't believe that Jesus was historical or even that the Book of Mormon's historical, you can still go to the temple. Like, I know I've got family members that have been told by stake presidents, I don't care if you identify as an atheist. If you want to go to the temple, if you want to be there in the pews, I'll sign your recommend, let you ordain your son, because this is all about the fight. But, so I don't mean to mischaracterize the church, but in my case, it was the church uncomfortable with the influence that Mormon Stories was having. And I'm, and I'm not saying Mormon stories, the information that Mormon Stories was conveying, the church was not prepared to deal with. And so they took me out as, as a way. But I, you know, I, I was grateful in the sense that I had so much cognitive dissonance with the LGBT stuff and with other things that it took away a lot of my cognitive dissonance. But I think the church made a mistake because I think it, I think a lot of people came with me and are still coming with me because like you said, it doesn't show a lot of confidence or Christlike compassion to just malign and take out your, your sincere questioners and critics. And I think I represented tens of thousands of them. But anyway, that's what you get for asking me. My listeners get mad when I talk too much on my end.

Jim Bennett [01:21:19] No, well, I, I, but you asked, so I asked and I wanted to hear the answer.

Belief in Jesus Within a Mormon Framework

John Dehlin [01:21:23] So, yeah, okay, so, so the next big one is Jesus. And you know, I, I, I had Bart Ehrman on, He's one of the most worldly, world renowned critics of, of, of a divine Bible and historical Bible, and he believes there was a historical Jesus and we don't need to get into that. But there are people that sort of say, why was an atonement necessary? Like, why, if God's all powerful, why did he have to take his own child, his perfect son, punish him and punish him and punish him, suffer pain, torment, so that we could be forgiven for our sins. Isn't there another way that, that we, you know, that he could have made that right? Why do we even need a savior? You know what I mean? And it's this whole mathematical thing that, like, there's this formula in the sky of, like, all the, all the bad things ever done, add them all up, some big number. Now God's got to punish his pure, you know, perfect son with that amount of pain so that the demands of justice can be satisfied. And that's the only way we all get back to heaven. There's just a lot of people. It's like, that's, that's too big. I can't even understand it. And if Jesus was part divine anyway, does that even. Do we even, like, have pity and sadness for Jesus if he was part Superman? Like, like, it just doesn't make sense on some level. And if I've got to believe that, what if I just want to believe that Jesus taught to be kind? And I like that. And what if I just want to believe that Jesus, his sacrifice was noble if he just died for teaching to be good? And that's, that's inspirational. And that's as far as I really want to go. Can I still be a Mormon and not have to buy into all this superpower, God punishing divinity, cosmic math that just seems almost like, like the Avengers, you know what I mean? Can you still be a Mormon?

Jim Bennett [01:23:26] Well, I mean, the question can you still be a Mormon? Is not one that I can answer definitively. Sure. I mean, in my opinion, yes. And the opinion of others, maybe not. I don't know. You mentioned before a historical Book of Mormon. I don't know of the temple recommend question where you're asked, do you believe in a historical Book of Mormon? How many of these questions, what's a deal breaker? When do you say, okay, if I don't believe this, I'm no longer a member of the church. And I don't know where that line is. And I don't think anybody definitively does. And people draw the line arbitrarily and sometimes draw it in a place where I wouldn't draw it personally, but with regard to why Jesus and why was it necessary for him to suffer and all of that kind of thing, I actually believe that the restored gospel and the theology that we've inherited with the restored gospel provides the only logical explanation for that. Because if you believe in a God ex nihilo, if you believe that there was nothing and then all of a sudden there was something, and then God just made people, and yet he made them in a way that they are imperfect and all these kinds of things, that whole system doesn't make a lick of sense. Because if you define omnipotence as being able to do anything no matter what it is, then you can certainly create a universe where suffering is unnecessary and where people can be exalted and live in the presence of God and have every aspect of perfection without having to suffer to get there. But if we believe as we do, or at least as I understand that we do, that there was a time when we lived in the presence of God, that there is an element of us that is co. Eternal with God, and that this is the process by which we become like God, then all of a sudden the idea of an atonement and the idea that, okay, I'm providing a safety net for you because this is the way to get there. You said earlier in this conversation, omnipotence. How do you define omnipotence? Because I wouldn't define omnipotence as the ability to do anything. I would define it as the ability to do anything that it can be done. Those are two very different things. Because I don't think that it's possible for us to become perfected unless we go through suffering. I don't think it's possible for us to become like God without this experience. And I come back again to the Garden of Gethsemane. If it be possible, God would have done it, or God is not a compassionate God, but it's not possible. The only way that we can do this is that we go through this suffering, and the suffering leaves us imperfect and scarred. And the atonement is necessary to be able to repair that kind of damage. Now, you know when you talk about it as the Avengers and you talk about this kind of stuff, I don't mean disrespect. No, I don't know. I don't. I know you don't.

John Dehlin [01:26:37] I don't mean disrespect.

Jim Bennett [01:26:38] I know you don't. But the more. The deeper I get into this in terms of my own personal understanding, the less persuaded I am by ideas of magical manifestations that there's something magical or. I believe that the scriptural accounts that we have that describe things that would Be cinematic in an Avengers kind of way? Are writers trying to put into language things that don't fit easily into language? And so they're using metaphor to some degree. I mean, this is opening the whole idea of how much of the Scriptures do we need to take literally? And that kind of stuff? And I find that to be a rather tedious discussion usually, but I don't think we can even begin. We're not even asked to try to comprehend what the atonement was, but was it this big, massive thing with angels fighting? I mean, I think whatever was happening in the soul of the Savior is something that we can't possibly begin to understand or comprehend. And that's kind of a cheat, I guess, but I just sort of back away from it and just stand in awe of the fact that. That God did not leave us unsaved, that going through this process knowing that we were going to screw up, that we came here for the express purpose of screwing up, that he provided a way for us to be able to survive that experience. You know, this comes back when I taught seminary for three years. My CES letter reply says, from a former CES employee. I was actually an independent contractor. So I guess that was illegal to say I was an employee. I was never an employee, but I taught early morning seminary. And I always wrestled with the idea of conflicting commandments. And I actually had parents in my seminary class say, you can't teach the Adam and Eve story because you're heretical on that. Because I always said, I don't believe in conflicting commandments. I don't believe God gives you conflicting commandments. If he did, then at what point would God come to the garden and say, well, you haven't multiplied and replenished the earth. Well, I can't, because I haven't taken this, you know, yeah, that. That indicts God. As I've gotten older and I and I come to appreciate the lessons of the Adam and Eve story more than trying to sort of literally understand what it was that happened. I realize that each of us is Adam and Eve because we chose to come to a place where we would be separated from God and where we would sin and where we would fall short. We each made that deliberate choice, and we each had to make that deliberate choice. And the theology of the restored gospel gives you the ability to put that in a context that I think the rest of the Christian world doesn't have, because we recognize that the suffering isn't an aberration. The suffering is the point that we came, we chose to do this because we knew that this was the only way. If it were possible that there were some other way, then we would have taken that way. But it isn't possible. The only way is for us to learn from our own experience the good from the evil, and for us to learn from our own experience the lessons that suffering teaches us. So I don't know that that's a satisfying answer to your question, because I can't begin to say that I understand why the atonement is necessary and I certainly respect people who look at that and say it just seems cruel and it just seems over the top. And why can't a God just allow us all to be happy and perfect and wonderful without all of this? And I don't think anybody has a full answer to that question, but I think that the church has a better answer to that question than the rest of the Christian world does with the framework of our theology.

John Dehlin [01:31:09] Right. I think that what we're trying to explore is this tension of. And this is a bit of a. Just a follow up, because on the one hand, what you're saying is we really don't know for sure it's God and Jesus and the atonement are way too complex for anyone to really fully understand. They're too deep, they're too complicated.

What We Can and Cannot Know About God

Jim Bennett [01:31:37] But those are two different things. To say we don't know for sure and to say we don't fully understand. I think we can know for sure that there is a God and that there was an atonement and that we. But to fully understand that atonement, we're nowhere anywhere close to that.

John Dehlin [01:31:53] Right? Yeah. And, and, but, but the way that we're taught as Mormons, or at least the way I was taught as a Mormon, is like, this is the atonement and this is how it works. And this is who God is and this is what God's like. And that's kind of what distinguished Joseph Smith and his brand of Mormonism from all the other Protestant Christian religions that were around him. So it's like the more. And it gets to the point where we believe that we will become God someday. Right. But then, but then when you dig a little bit deeper and Mike Wallace or Whoever asked Gordon McHinkley about this, well, Gordon McHinkley says, well, I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize that, you know, and, and when our evangelical friends get all mad, like with the God Makers, we're like, well, that's, you know, that's not necessarily Mormon doctrine. So I think there's a lot. Something that I think we're reconciling with is the level of specificity and detail that we've. We all grew up with and that Joseph Smith claimed with the. With the reality that we really don't know much beyond the surface, these surface explanations that sometimes we backtrack on ourselves as a church. And the truth is we all see through a glass darkly. And I think you would agree with that. But then when. When, you know, we're in seminary, that's not how we're taught. We're taught this is. The prophet talks to God, and this is what the Scriptures mean. And, and so I think in a way, we're set up sometimes to then lose our faith because we're taught to orthodox a view. I think there's a. There's a value to having an orthodox view when we're young and when we're teens and when we're young adults. Right. But that's what Father Stages of Faith is about. Those orthodox views don't hold up. If, If God is. Is once, was once a man, what does he do with his reproductive system? What does he do with his digestive system? Does he have a liver? Does he blow his nose? If he closes his eyes, can he not see? Like, we don't. We don't go deeper, you know, to really understand what any of this means. But on a level, we're taught that we've got it all figured out. But then when we're pushed, we back off and say, well, we really don't know. And this is all of us seeing through a glass darkly. But I think the church is sometimes uncomfortable, really, really admitting that all the way around. It tries to sometimes sell its level of certainty higher than it really has.

Jim Bennett [01:34:24] Well, again, I mean, you talk about Gordon B. Hinckley being interviewed by Larry King. I mean, and I see a lot of people who look at that one moment and say, oh, the church was backing away from this. And I say, how about Gordon B. Hinckley Just isn't quite sure how to answer that question and maybe fumbled a little bit. I mean, to take that as okay, I have to somehow reconcile my faith with an offhand comment by Gordon B. Hinckley in a nationally televised interview. I don't really have that kind of a faith anymore. I don't see that as, you know, how do I reconcile goofy things my seminary teacher taught. I mean, I had a seminary teacher that taught about the ice planet that crashed into the earth that caused the global flood. And I look at that and go, why do I have to believe that? I don't believe that. There's no reason why I have to believe that. So it's not in terms of the specificity of what the church teaches. I don't know of any specific teaching by Joseph Smith or anybody else as to how we're going to spend our time in the eternities and what that really kind of looks like. I mean, he's specific that God was once a man, that all this kind of stuff. But the, the questions you ask about his liver and all that kind of stuff, that never came up in Sunday school at all. I mean, I never got, oh, this is exactly how God functions. This is how he spends his day. The question I always had was, if God exists in one time in space, then how on earth can he hear all of these prayers? How does that work? How does eternity function? And I was always terrified, okay, when I die, do I have to wait in line for 100 billion years before I get some face time with my heavenly Father and with Jesus Christ? And I see movies like Heaven Is For Real, where Jesus shows up the minute you die. How does Jesus show up the minute you die when there are people dying every second? And how is Jesus there every single time to meet every single one of them? And I don't think the church has ever tried to say that they understand those kinds of conundrums. They give us the broad strokes and say, yes, God is. We are of the same species of God and all this kind of stuff. But the idea that the rest of that was taught with any specificity, that was not necessarily my experience. I don't doubt that it might have been yours or it might have been other people's experience. But, but the idea that the church says, oh, no, we have those answers. We know exactly what eternity is going to be like. I haven't ever Sunday school class where that's been the case.

John Dehlin [01:37:09] That's not actually what I'm arguing. What I'm saying is that when we teach the model of prophets speak to God, right? And then, and then prophets tell us what's going on. And when we produce Scripture, we give members the impression that we know. We pretty much know all the, all the details and all the important stuff. And you just need to believe this and everything's going to be fine. We imbue within our youth and our adults this level of, like, knowledge and certainty.

Jim Bennett [01:37:40] So what you're saying, what you're saying is that we teach people to have faith in the Prophet, that the prophet knows things that we don't. The prophet has some kind of secret knowledge that the prophet has this all

John Dehlin [01:37:53] figured out, kind of, that it's all. Yeah, we kind of know all the important stuff, right?

Jim Bennett [01:37:57] Well, yeah, but does the prophet know about God's liver and how if he closes his eyes, can he still see things? I mean, does the prophet know all.

John Dehlin [01:38:05] Well, that's my point, is that we, we probably give them more credit than they deserve. Well, you know, and I'm not saying it's, it's important whether or not God has a liver. What I'm saying is, is that the, the, the God, whatever God is, God is way more sophisticated than, than a prophet even understands.

Jim Bennett [01:38:27] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:38:28] And whatever the, whatever happened with the atonement, if something powerful and majestic happened, a prophet doesn't even have 1% of an understanding of what, how it really happened. But we look at these, we're taught to look at these men like they know they really, they really have it figured out. When the truth is that we all see through a glass darkly, including the prophet. And that's why in 2015, Russell and Nelson can say this was, this policy, was, was doctrine and it was a revelation. And then just a couple years later, it's like, oh, God's changing his mind. Well, the truth is the only way to really reconcile that is that those guys got it wrong. Right, Right. But what the members, you know, what they tried to tell the members was

Jim Bennett [01:39:15] we were right when we made the

John Dehlin [01:39:16] revel, the first revelation, and then God changed it and God was right both times when really they just. The only answer is they got it wrong. And they also did this without really admitting it with the blacks in the priesthood. It can't be both that it was doctrine that blacks not have the priesthood and that it was just a policy and, and it was folklore. Any of those teachings, like you can't have it both ways. And yet Russell M. Nelson today. And the church keeps trying to have it both ways, where the church is led by prophets that have it all figured out and they do 180 reversals all the time and both were led by God. No, what happened was these leaders all see through glass really darkly, and they get it wrong often. And sometimes they're behind the rest of the civilized world and making changes. And that's really, that doesn't mean there's no inspiration there. You can still believe in inspiration, but that's all I'm trying to say is that they've kind of sold to us a level of Knowledge and of certainty systemically, intentionally or unintentionally, that's greater than. Than what they likely have, in my view.

Jim Bennett [01:40:32] I would agree with some of that and not with others of that, which is to say, we talk about the level of certainty. What is it that we are certain about? Are we certain there is a God? Are we certain that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world? Can you be certain of those things and still get other things wrong and mess up along the way? And my answer is I believe absolutely that it is possible to be certain of God's existence, of God's love for us. And I would say that because I have experienced it personally. Now, does that mean that that experience qualifies me in any way to sort of expand on all of these things with a level of authority and certainty that would make you comfortable or would make anybody else comfortable? Absolutely not. You know, it's interesting that you mentioned the policy, because right after the policy was rescinded, and out of respect for this man, I'm not going to identify him, but I met with the general authority and was talking to him and found myself deeply and profoundly disappointed because I was hopeful that that experience would start a conversation within the church because it was so clearly, as you described, there was a mistake made. It was a mistake made under color of revelation, right? And then three years later, oops, we've changed it. And I thought, there's no way anybody can look at that and not say that was a mistake. So let's start having a conversation. What does it mean that our church leaders are capable of making mistakes? And there have been acknowledgments, most, I think bluntly by then, President Uchtdorf. There are some times when leaders have simply made mistakes. We hear that every once in a while, but it's buried under this sort of cultural expectation of infallibility. And when I talked to this general authority, he said, well, the Savior said, don't carry purse or scrip. And then three years later said, now take purse or scrip. This is the way the Lord works. This happens all the time. And I thought, first of all, those two events are completely. They're not comparable at all. And second of all, that's completely missing the point. If you are trying to build up an expectation of infallibility with these men, then people are going to leave the church. And that's the thing. I get very frustrated whenever I interact with Desnat types who insist, you know, I have some. I shouldn't admit this, but I have some burner Twitter Accounts that I've gone into to go and wrangle Desnat every once in a while. And a couple of them are like, hey, aren't you Jim Bennett? I'm like, oh, I better stop it. But the Desnat motto is, brigham Young did nothing wrong. And I just think how. How shaky is the foundation of your faith if it's built on the idea, the false idea, that Brigham Young never did anything wrong? Because, of course, Brigham Young did things that were wrong. That's the purpose of mortality. We're all born with agency, and your agency is never extracted from you at any point in the process when you're a bishop. We accept the fact that we have imperfect bishops or imperfect stake presidents. But it was Joseph Fielding McConkie who gave a lecture once that I listened to where he talked about, at what point do we suppose infallibility begins? You know, after you're promoted to be a regional representative? We don't have those anymore. I guess they're area authorities now. Are they infallible? Is that when infallibility starts? Is that when they're not capable of making mistakes? And I think that the reason why mistakes endure longer than they should is that we do not have the institutional fortitude to admit them. I think the priesthood ban endured far longer than it should have simply because nobody was willing to admit that maybe Brigham Young got something wrong. Spencer Kimball was willing to admit that. Privately, he talked about. If you read his son's essay about the priesthood revelation, and he talks about the possibility that this was an error, you know, well, they never talk about that with the general membership of the church. But you look at this, and there's no possible way to reconcile that without just saying we got it wrong. And that's the point of mortality, is to get things wrong. And the idea that somehow the church is immune from that, or that there has ever been a time on the face of the earth when prophets have been immune from that is to disregard the entire biblical record. It's to disregard the Book of Mormon record. It's to disregard everything that we know about what human nature is and what we're taught human nature is. So I really feel very strongly that the root of all of our current problems with faith crisis is a false expectation of infallibility from the church and from its leaders.

John Dehlin [01:46:00] But. But with. You know, with the way that we stand up when the. When the prophet or the apostles enter the room and the way that we excommunicate people, well, we forbid people from criticizing them. We make it a temple covenant that you're not allowed to speak ill of them, which.

Jim Bennett [01:46:16] Evil speaking.

John Dehlin [01:46:17] But, but, but the way that that's interpreted is to disagree. I mean, not always, but like, if, if you stand up in a. I've had friends that just said, I, I just, you know, they, they basically all they said was, I disagree with the prophet on his LGBT stance. And their temple recommends were taken away.

Jim Bennett [01:46:34] Right.

John Dehlin [01:46:35] Like, you have to admit that for 150 years, we may be willing to say. Or the prophets may be willing to say, we're not perfect. But if you try and stand up as a Mormon and disagree with the prophet or even, you know, question them, you can, you can wind up anywhere from shunned to losing your access to being excommunicated like me and Jeremy and, And that's. And then the church teaches their children to sing Follow the Prophet. Follow the Prophet, Follow the Prophet, you know, and, and that song rips off

Jim Bennett [01:47:13] the Stonecutter song from the Simpsons. Yeah, yeah. They're exactly the same melody. Sorry.

John Dehlin [01:47:18] We do, we do. Yeah. But, but, but this is a problem of the church's creation. It's a problem of the brethren's creation because they bear testimony. I know, beyond, you know, with the testimony strong. You know, they, they, they hype it that they're special witnesses of Christ, that, you know, they perpetuate the belief that they have that bat phone that they talk to God and that they shouldn't be disagreed with or criticized.

Prophets, Fallibility, and Special Witnesses

Jim Bennett [01:47:45] Well, what does it mean to be a special witness of Christ?

John Dehlin [01:47:47] No, no, I'm talking about what they give the members.

Jim Bennett [01:47:51] Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:47:51] So you can, you can have a very elegant and respectable view of all this. I'm just trying to get you to acknowledge, not to throw them under the bus, but just to acknowledge this is fundamentally a problem of the church's making this over confidence and overestimation of the. The brethren's level of inspiration and knowledge and, and infallibility, I believe. Or why else are they excommunicating people and yanking their temple recommends and shunning them if they disagree?

Jim Bennett [01:48:26] I mean, I'm trying to. Maybe I'm being too guarded here, but I think there are two different things you're talking about. I mean, one is. Or maybe we're talking about two different things, because you're talking about the idea that they sell that they know more than they actually do. And I may be interpreting that.

John Dehlin [01:48:49] Create a culture where they're adored and worshiped.

Jim Bennett [01:48:52] Okay, okay. But, but. I look at that and see the problem as that they've Created a culture where people believe they are infallible. And I'm not necessarily sure that's the same thing. Right. I mean, is it. Do you have to be infallible to be the kind of special witness that you're describing? No, I think.

John Dehlin [01:49:19] In fact, I honestly think infallibility is a bit of a red herring.

Jim Bennett [01:49:22] You think it's a different thing.

John Dehlin [01:49:23] While I'm saying is that we.

Jim Bennett [01:49:28] We.

John Dehlin [01:49:29] We are nurtured to put them on a pedestal. The culture. A culture has been nurtured where they are sold to us. They sell themselves to us as special witnesses. And what we all interpret from that in an unsophisticated way is that they have a bat phone. And what they tell us comes from God. And. And when we have to stand up in the room. Stand up when they come in the room. Right. And we speak about them when they're with so much reverence and we're not allowed to publicly criticize them. And we take oaths and covenants not to ever criticize them. And so many people have been punished when they've tried to speak openly, to disagree with them or criticize them. That is an. That is a total culture that they have allowed and nurtured in some way such that this becomes a reason why so many people leave because they find out the emperor doesn't have the clothes that they thought they had, and. And then. Then they're bailing. And I'm just saying this is partly a problem that goes right to the top, in my view.

Jim Bennett [01:50:36] No, and I can understand that. I think you have a valid point to some degree. I always point out that I have never asked in a temple recommend interview if I agree with the brethren. I'm asked if I sustain the brethren. And sustaining is not the same thing as agreeing. And I firmly believe that. At the same time, I mean, I recognize the temple covenants and all of those kinds of things. I'm trying not to throw the baby out with the bathwater because I think you do have to. I don't want you to throw the

John Dehlin [01:51:12] baby out the bath.

Jim Bennett [01:51:13] No, but I think you do have a point. I think there are cultural problems. I think it stems from this idea of infallibility. I mean, the bat phone to God. I mean, think there are people who believe that every Thursday meeting that the apostles have, there's an extra chair because Jesus comes and runs the meeting sometimes, and sometimes he lets other people run the meetings and all that kind of thing. And we have that sort of cultural expectation. And I think that's Nonsense. And I think that it's not hard to discover that that's nonsense within a faithful perspective within the church. But if you don't really want to push at all, if you don't really want to talk to anybody. I mean, if you were to talk. My father's conversation with Harold B. Lee, if you were to talk to the Brethren one on one, and I have talked to the brethren one on one in several occasions, they would say a large degree of that is nonsense.

John Dehlin [01:52:03] Right.

Jim Bennett [01:52:03] But that's culturally. If you have private.

John Dehlin [01:52:06] Like, I met with Elder Holland a couple times. He was very personable and humble.

Jim Bennett [01:52:12] Right.

John Dehlin [01:52:12] But what. What. What I think is undeniable is that there is a culture that's been created where, yes, they'll acknowledge their frailties privately. And. And yes, occasionally we've had someone get up in general conference and say, hey, we're not perfect. But whenever a member publicly speaks out and says, I disagree or you're wrong or you're hurting people, you. You. More often than not, those people have had their heads chopped off, either, you know, spiritually or membership wise or culturally. And that's a culture that the brethren have continued to allow, but they're getting better.

Jim Bennett [01:52:56] Yeah, Well, I think that's the one where I'm not quite sure. I'm trying to put this at a. When I went on the Bill Real podcast and I talked about how much I disagreed with the policy, the November 2015 policy, and Bill Real really zeroed in on my difficulty, struggling, and I continue to struggle. With the church's stand on LGBTQ issues. I see it as deeply problematic. And I remember when the policy happened, I talked about it publicly, I blogged about it. I did all this kind of stuff. And it was amazing to me, shocking to me how quickly people were calling for me to get out of the church. The minute I said, this is making me uncomfortable, I got all these comments. Well, leave.

John Dehlin [01:53:54] No, I don't think that.

Jim Bennett [01:53:56] No, I don't think you think that. But they're members of the church that are eager. Jana Reese just published an article that says she's no longer paying tithing to the church. She pays tithing in charity. And I read through the comments, and it was, get out of here. You're not a member anymore. Get lost. And I made a comment to one of them. I don't understand why you want to see fewer people in the church, why you're so eager to get rid of her. And I was stunned when I expressed disagreement that people were. There were so many people that were so eager. I mean, here I am, a lifelong member who's been a white bread orthodox, nothing to write home about. Guy all of a sudden, get out. We don't want you here anymore. Get out, get out, get out. And I was stunned by that. And I remember when I published my CES letter reply, I got one message from a guy saying, oh, I'm so glad you came back. And I went, what do you mean, so glad I came back? He says, well, with all of your stuff over the policy, you know, you were out there for a while. I'm so glad you came back. I said, I'm exactly where I was. I haven't changed at all. And my opposition to the policy hasn't changed. This is my faith, and my faith includes a recognition that these leaders can get things wrong. And I believe that these leaders in good faith have gotten something very profoundly wrong in this case. But where I'm getting uncomfortable when you talk about this, and they all get cut out because they speak out.

John Dehlin [01:55:23] Not all.

Jim Bennett [01:55:24] No, no. But the part of discipleship is having enough charity and giving leaders enough grace that I believe sustain doesn't mean agree. And in fact, you sustain your leaders more when you disagree with them than when you agree with them. And it's not always something as explosive or big as these kinds of doctrinal issues. I remember when I was called to be a Weblows leader. I thought I hated Boy Scouts as a kid. I couldn't stand it. I'm gonna be a terrible Weblows leader. I don't wanna be a Webelos leader, but you're my bishop and I sustain you, and I'm gonna be a Weiblos leader. And I went on to be a really lousy Weiblos leader, but that, to me, demonstrated sustaining my leaders. And I still think he was wrong to call me to that position, but I was willing to sustain him. So the tension that I see within the church, and I don't have an answer to it, is that I don't think a model where, okay, I'm unhappy with the church's stand on LGBTQ issues, and therefore, I'm going to stand up in the middle of general conference and I'm going to lead a protest and I'm going to do all that kind of thing. I don't think there's a model that allows for that. And. But at the same time, I agree with you that somebody that just simply expresses disagreement or frustration with the church getting cut out of the church. I think that's a Terrible model.

John Dehlin [01:57:07] And you agree it happens?

Jim Bennett [01:57:08] And I agree it happens. Of course it does. So I began this by telling. After I did the Bill Real podcast, I had a member of my ward who says, you didn't know this about me, but I'm a closet doubter. And he says, I listen to all 14 hours of your Bill Real podcast, and he says, you may be in trouble because you were talking a lot about LGBTQ issues and how much you disagree, and you better watch your step. I would, in fact, reach out to your stake president and tell him that you did this. And there was a member of the stake presidency who used to be my bishop, and I served in the bishopric with him. I was his second counselor. And so I said, well, I can call him. And I called him and I said, you need to know that I did these podcasts. And this is what I said, and this is what happened. And I just want to be very upfront about it. And he gave a really powerful answer to me. He says, jim, you went on those podcasts with the intent of defending. The church says, we don't attack people who make mistakes when they're defending. We don't discipline people who make mistakes when they're defending. We discipline people who go on the attack. He says, and you were not going on the attack. He says, I don't see that this is going to be a problem at all. And I've talked to him many times since, and he says, nobody's complained to us about you. He says, we haven't heard anything about anything you said. And that same closet disbeliever who recommended I do that said, whatever you do, this teaches you, you should never go on John Dehlin's podcast. This is a lesson for you. Don't ever do that. So I'm disobeying his counsel here by coming here. So, yeah, there is a real tension. How do you deal with disagreement? And I do not have the perfect answer to it, but I'm not willing to go as far as you are and just say, okay, well, the church has completely botched this. The church is completely doing this wrong. The church is going out of its way just to slice off anybody who disagrees, because I don't think that's necessarily true.

John Dehlin [01:59:15] Actually, that wasn't my position.

Jim Bennett [01:59:16] Okay. I don't mean to misrepresent you.

John Dehlin [01:59:18] Yeah. But. But, you know, I. You know, I. I'm trying to. And this is what. This is a common dynamic that. That happens between people who may be criticized and through people who are trying to explain the church's position is this. I'm not saying you're erecting a straw man intentionally.

Jim Bennett [01:59:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:59:41] But, like, I'm not saying something really extreme. I'm. I'm merely just saying that. That a lot of people were raised with unrealistic expectations about what it means to be a prophet and what truth is and what doctrine is.

Jim Bennett [02:00:00] Right.

John Dehlin [02:00:00] And. And they found out that. That what they were taught doesn't really align with reality. Right. And a lot of people along the way who. Who didn't express their concerns in the right way were cut off. And the church was complicit in that. And I'm not saying everyone, but a lot of people, because the church did, at some level, not, as you acknowledged at the very beginning, not share its warts and its skeletons. And the church absolutely punished people for decades and decades and decades who spoke out in the wrong ways that the church didn't like. They absolutely did do that. And they fostered a culture where, yes, you could have private concerns. And this is what happened with my stake President.

Jim Bennett [02:01:00] Right.

John Dehlin [02:01:01] I'm like, I don't want you to excommunicate me. What do I have to do? And he's like, shut your podcast down. And I'm like, I'm not going to do that.

Jim Bennett [02:01:08] Right.

John Dehlin [02:01:08] He's like, yeah, shut your podcast down. Take it all down, and don't ever talk again. And I'm like, no, unless you're faithful. I'm like, no. Like, my genuine experience was to have questions and doubts and to even go through periods of disbelief or even anger and frustration, and to do it publicly, because that's what a lot of people are doing privately. And I'm sick of seeing so many people silenced and shut down and cut off, whether it's Brent Metcalf, Maxine Hanks, Fawn Brody, whoever it is. We have decades and decades and decades of hiding and silencing people sometimes and. And punishing and coercing, cursing people sometimes, not all the time. And that was. The Brethren presided over that.

Jim Bennett [02:01:55] Right.

John Dehlin [02:01:56] And that's all I'm saying, is that. That. That it probably was good for the church in fostering a culture where you weren't criticizing the Brethren all the time and you were being faithful and helping people feel good and positive. So I understand why they did it. But this big. This. This moment that we're having with the Mormon stories and the CES letter and Mormon think and all these things, the Church is kind of reaping what it sowed by. By punting and pushing this down the Generations. It was the Internet that basically you talk about Joseph Smith papers project would have never happened without the Internet.

Jim Bennett [02:02:35] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:02:36] And the Gospel Topics essays would have never happened without, you know, dialogue and then sunstone and then Mormon stories and then, you know, and then it happened before the CES letter. But like all these things that you're like, oh, the church is doing so great now, that's because of us who like, beat the church senseless until it had to acknowledge the things that, you know, some people say it. Richard Bushman gets praised for what Fawn Brody got excommunicated for.

Jim Bennett [02:03:08] Right.

John Dehlin [02:03:09] You know, Fawn Brody is the, is the most cited source by Richard Bushman. The Gospel Topics essays, you know, are, are now teaching what was denied as anti Mormon literature just a few decades ago to the point where so many active believing Mormons believe that the Gospel Topics essays were, were hacks that somehow anti Mormons hacked the church's website. Because there's no way the what's in the Gospel Topics essays is truth. That's anti Mormon stuff. That's not just people's imagination. That's a culture that was carefully cultivated by people like Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie and Boyd K. Packer. You know, the mantle is greater than the intellect. And, you know, not all things that are true are useful. I'm just saying that this situation we're in that fair Mormon's so angry about that the Brethren don't know what to do with. It's a problem that B.H. roberts put the church on notice for in the teens and twenties, the nineteen teens and twenties. And the brethren chose to send B.H. roberts on a mission and excommunicate Fawn Brody and denounce the Tanners and send Hugh Nibley after Fawn Brody and the Tanners and excommunicate the September 6th and, and denounce symposia like Sunstone and dialogue like this is a long history of the Brethren's making at some level. And I'm not saying they're evil, bad people. I believe that they were just trying to nurture faith. They were trying to keep a, a culture in a church healthy and strong, and they were trying to just promote faith in God and Jesus. And I, I think, I think they were sincere, pretty much all, most if not all of them were sincere beloved believers at some level. But, but there was a degree to which they perpetuated incomplete truths, incomplete understandings of the gospel, sometimes misperceptions, and then a culture of, of intolerance for open discussion and Criticism that has led to what we're experiencing today. That's my view. And I would, you know, obviously, I would love for you to go. Yeah, I can see. I can see that. Not. Not to. Not to agree with all of it, but to go, yeah, I see. I acknowledge that there's truth in what you're saying. Well, because to me, it's so obvious. You know what I mean?

Excommunication and the One True Church Claim

Jim Bennett [02:05:39] Yeah. Well, so how do you. How do you put Sterling McMurran into that model? Do you know Sterling?

John Dehlin [02:05:45] Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course.

Jim Bennett [02:05:47] Well, because Sterling McMurran, they were threatening to excommunicate Sterling McMurran. And David O. McKay said to him, yeah, they call a church court. I'm going to be the first person that comes and is a witness on your behalf.

John Dehlin [02:05:57] He was lucky.

Jim Bennett [02:05:58] Right, right.

John Dehlin [02:05:59] He was lucky. Like, if you know the right people, if you're friends with the right people, you know. But, but Fawn Brody, David O. McKay didn't stop.

Jim Bennett [02:06:08] Right, right, right.

John Dehlin [02:06:09] And. But so again, my point isn't that everyone got excommunicated who disagree.

Jim Bennett [02:06:14] No, but that's not my point. What I'm saying, when you paint the picture that way, I mean, I listen to that. And again, I'm not trying to disagree specifically with it, but one of the things that is at issue, and this is kind of my whole approach in my reply to the CES letter and everything else, is that you can look at the same set of facts and come to a very different set of conclusions. And if I came down from Mars and I knew nothing about the church and I heard what you had just said, my reaction would been, boy, these guys in Salt Lake City must be the biggest monsters on the face of the Earth.

John Dehlin [02:06:51] And I'm not making that argument. No, but that's, again, going to the extreme.

Jim Bennett [02:06:54] Right. No, I understand that, but the point is that what's happening in terms of how the church grows and understands and matures, in terms of how it deals with disagreement and deals with doubt, lends itself to plenty of examples where people have done that very poorly. People on every level, and people continue to do that very poorly. So I can look at that and I can sit there and go, yeah, we can go through every single case and I can give you my opinion. That person should have been excommunicated. No, that person shouldn't have been. That, to me, is not a productive exercise. I mean, I don't even want to go in and say whether or not you should have been excommunicated or anybody else. I mean, I Don't want to second guess anybody in terms of any of that. I don't see how that's productive. What I look at in terms of how this functions is not necessarily. I look at the trajectory of the church, I look at where we are going, I look at what we are learning from what we have already done. And I think we are drawing some very. We are reaping the whirlwind in spots where we have made serious and profound mistakes. But I think that is also driving us toward policies of greater openness, policies of greater change. And I want to celebrate and embrace that. Sure. And, you know, so when you tell me about all of these things and I listen to this and I go, in this documentary that we're involved with with Robert Reynolds, John Gustav Rathal talks about his experience as an excommunicated gay Latter Day Saint. And he says, if you want the church to be a welcoming place for gay people, you can't leave the church, because who is the church? You are the church. And I see that as my role. As I look at this and go, okay, I can listen to all this and take all of this in, but these are my people. This is my church. My church is doing this. I am a part of a church that has done things that are wrong and are frustrating. But I very much. One of the things that very frustrates me is that I can point to so much that the church has gotten right.

John Dehlin [02:09:27] Yeah.

Jim Bennett [02:09:27] You know, in the context of me, too. I mean, again, if I came down from Mars and heard that, like, who would want to go to that church? And I say, well, because this is the church that when my daughter was injured, the entire ward came in and completely remade my house and saved our lives and did all this and mobilized itself on the drop of a dime. And the compassion and the kindness and all of this that I've experienced in this church is remarkable to me. And then you can point to, well, but there have been moments where the church has done things that the church shouldn't have done and bad things have happened and leaders have done bad things. And I can look at all of that and say, look, you've got to look at the whole thing in terms of context. By their fruits, ye shall know them. Those are not the only fruits of the church. The frustrating, difficult.

John Dehlin [02:10:17] And that's not my argument.

Jim Bennett [02:10:18] And again, I'm not saying it's your argument, but. But, but what. What I'm saying is I'm the first

John Dehlin [02:10:23] to sing praises to the church and all the good that it's done for me and other people.

Jim Bennett [02:10:28] Right.

John Dehlin [02:10:28] And I think the church does so much good.

Jim Bennett [02:10:31] The. I think the core problem at the heart of all of that is a false expectation of infallibility, which I am

John Dehlin [02:10:38] just trying to say that. That the. The leadership has helped to foster that false.

Jim Bennett [02:10:44] I don't think there's any question. Yeah, I don't think there's any question.

John Dehlin [02:10:46] And the only other thing I'll say is that, number one, it's smart for you to focus on the future and the positive things because that is how you keep your membership intact. Right. I mean, Dallas jokes is on record as saying it is wrong to criticize the Brethren, even if the criticism is true. So, I mean, you come by this approach because it's the smart way to maintain your membership. And the only other thing I'm going to say is, well, you can respond to that, but I'll just say two things, and then I want you to respond. That is the way to keep your membership is by not criticizing the Brethren and by focusing on the positive. And then the second thing is all the progress you're heralding has come on the back of a lot of people's suffering and pain, like me, like Fon Brody, like BH Roberts, like Leonard Arrington, like Lowell Bennion, like Lavina Feeling Anderson, like Juanita Brooks, like the Tanners, like Jeremy Runnels, on and on and on. People that were Brett Metcalf, you know, just on and on and on. People that took hits, that were defamed, that were maligned, that were ostracized, that were cut off, all the LGBT people that committed suicide or that got sick or that were cut off from their families. All this progress now that you're heralding came on the back of. Came on the backs of people that. That leaders in the church stepped on and crushed in one way or another. And you really can't separate those two things, in my view, as someone who's lived it, because I saw, I'm old enough. I'm 51. I'm old enough to know what it was like in the 80s and what it was like in the 90s. And all this stuff you're heralding came after Google, came after blogs, came after podcasts, came after the Internet, and came after so many people got crushed.

Jim Bennett [02:12:44] So what you're saying is that we learn from suffering, that the churches.

John Dehlin [02:12:51] That the progress of the church that you herald has come on the backs of people, that the church and its culture crushed.

Jim Bennett [02:13:01] It's.

John Dehlin [02:13:01] It's kind of like, you Enjoy the railroad now, but you have to acknowledge all the people that died to make the railroad.

Jim Bennett [02:13:09] Right?

John Dehlin [02:13:09] Right. It's dual. So don't throw them under the bus. And that's. It's kind of the spirit of, I think, why you're here, why you support Jeremy Runnels, and why you're on my podcast. I don't know that you're able to admit it or willing to admit it or want to admit it, but I feel respect from you, and I think Jeremy feels respect from you, and I think we'll get farther. There'll be less enemies in the church when. When critics are not demonized, but they're acknowledged as being important change makers. Even Jenna Reese, I'm sure she gets some heat for what she does. And there's a billion people. Peggy Fletcher Stack. So many pioneers. Right. We'll get so much farther if we can just go.

Jim Bennett [02:13:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:51] The. The Brethren. There are probably a lot of things the Brethren got wrong, and there are probably a lot of people that got mistreated. You don't have to name names. You don't have to say it was all worthless. I'm just saying that people who now herald the progress can't do that in good conscience and good faith without acknowledging the people that got crushed that that allowed the progress to happen. And can't we just. Can't we just acknowledge that?

Jim Bennett [02:14:22] I. I'm trying to put this. First of all, I'm glad you feel like I have respect for you because I do, and for Jeremy, because I do. And I have respect for people who leave the church and have. As you've. I didn't leave.

John Dehlin [02:14:44] I got kicked out.

Jim Bennett [02:14:45] Okay. And I have respect for people who

John Dehlin [02:14:47] get kicked out for speaking the truths that now the essays herald.

Jim Bennett [02:14:51] Right. I, I. The reason why I am being so hesitant is not because I'm trying to. It's not because I'm trying to deny factually anything that you're saying. I am hesitant to. To just say, oh, yes, absolutely, what you just said is 100% right. And, golly, I, I get very frustrated and exasperated by binary approaches to these issues, and I feel like that's a binary approach to this. What is the idea that all the progress that the church has made has come?

John Dehlin [02:15:33] Not all.

Jim Bennett [02:15:34] Okay, but not all. Well, you said all the things that I am heralding that are progress came

John Dehlin [02:15:39] on the backs of people who also lament. In part.

Jim Bennett [02:15:42] In part.

John Dehlin [02:15:43] In part, we were important. Part. The essays without. Without Hans Mattson. The Swedish Rescue Mormon stories. Right. Mormon Think. Google the essays probably would not have happened.

Jim Bennett [02:16:04] I don't.

John Dehlin [02:16:04] And I'll add dialogue and Sunstone and the Mormon History association and, you know, the September six and. And all those other things. Right. Without all of that.

Jim Bennett [02:16:15] Right.

John Dehlin [02:16:15] The essays would probably would have never happened.

Jim Bennett [02:16:17] Well, I. I know you're speculating, but

John Dehlin [02:16:20] I mean, I think it's.

Jim Bennett [02:16:20] No, but, but the. The thing that's frustrating about this. Okay, I'm trying to put this in the right context, because the thing that's frustrating about this is I think this perpetuates an adversarial relationship. I think by you saying, okay, well, until you acknowledge that the church has crushed me, that the church has been this sort of brutal bully that has crushed people over and over and over again, then we can't move forward or then we can't establish that kind of a dialogue.

John Dehlin [02:16:52] Because I'm not saying either of those things. I'm not saying that those are conditions for anything. No, but we're gonna have a good dialogue.

Jim Bennett [02:16:58] No, and I think.

John Dehlin [02:16:58] And we're gonna both feel good about it, and we don't have to even agree.

Jim Bennett [02:17:01] No, and I think we're having a good dialogue. But I mean, I hear similar sorts of approaches in faithful circles for people who describe you. I mean, you look at those videos by Kwaku and such where they put your face on a devil's body and you are the devil and you are wicked and evil and terrible. And they will come and they will say, the number of people that Jeremy Runnels and John Dehlin have driven out of the church because they have been, you know, they are eager to destroy the faith of all of these people. I mean, some of that goes to motives, but some of that will say, okay, but look, John Dehlind, you're giving audience to people who have an ax to grind against the church and all of these kinds of things. And they sit here and they create a very binary kind of black and white idea of what it is that you do and what it is that you're doing that I think is entirely unfair. And I think you would agree that it's unfair. But then I think what you're coming back with here is equally binary to some degree.

John Dehlin [02:18:12] Then let me, Let me amend. Let me see if I can put forward something that's not binary. I am saying that the church has blessed millions of lives, has done millions of good things, billions of good things collectively, that the brethren are generally amazingly good men with good hearts, that are generally very sincere, and that they've been just doing the best that they can and have done a great job at building an amazing organization in many, many ways. And, and the way that they've handled history and truth claims at times, along with the culture has not always led to. Has not always been complete and has not always led to cultures of general understanding and awareness about the problems with the church and its truth claims. And that in many instances, or in some instances, they have defamed or supported a culture that defames and, or crushes people that try and speak up and spread awareness and, or express concerns. I'm saying both.

Jim Bennett [02:19:31] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:19:32] That's all I'm saying.

Jim Bennett [02:19:33] Okay. I can't. I can't disagree with that. And I don't know if.

John Dehlin [02:19:40] And I'll add. I'll add. And many critics have gone too far. That many critics have gotten so angry. So it was like Margaret Toscano once said in a very early Mormon Stories interview, like, if you're sitting in the back seat and there's no air conditioning and it gets really hot, it's like, hey, mom and dad, can you. Can you turn up the ac? And they don't hear you and they see you, okay. You speak a little louder and it gets to the point where you start screaming. And whether it's new name Noah or Jeremy or me or whoever. Yes. There's a point where we've all screamed too loudly, gotten too angry, crossed lines. Like, I'll even add, I'll up the ante and say we've all messed up in the amount of anger or frustration that we've brought, that we have. We have spearheaded many unproductive conversations. And I would just say sometimes that's out of frustration for being not heard or not respected or not valued. But. But I'm even going to throw that on the pile and say when. When the brethren have crushed or been brutal to people or the church culture, sometimes we have shared inculpability. I'm even going to add that. How's that? To sweeten the pot? Does that sweeten the pot?

Jim Bennett [02:20:53] I think we're talking about different pots to some degree. I mean, because. Because I. Again, it's not my goal here to just say. To say the brethren have never done anything wrong. Yeah. Or to deny anything that they may have done wrong. It's to say that. That perpetuating grievances isn't necessarily helpful

John Dehlin [02:21:19] if it's just. It's just repentance. I'm just talking about. Ideally, we all learned what the steps of repentance are.

Jim Bennett [02:21:26] Right.

John Dehlin [02:21:26] They include acknowledging the Error.

Jim Bennett [02:21:28] Right.

John Dehlin [02:21:29] Apologizing. Right. And then making amends.

Jim Bennett [02:21:33] Right.

John Dehlin [02:21:34] And that's something that. That's something that Down H. Oaks is explicitly on record is saying, we don't do as a church.

Jim Bennett [02:21:39] Right.

Sustaining Fallible Leaders and Closing Reflections

John Dehlin [02:21:39] We don't acknowledge our problems.

Jim Bennett [02:21:42] We don't ask for apologies or.

John Dehlin [02:21:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And so, you know, you. It's not your job to. To do their job, but that's. That's something that would be.

Jim Bennett [02:21:53] But I sustained Alan Oaks. And so, you know, do you wish

John Dehlin [02:21:58] the church could follow those steps of repentance? Ideally, yeah, I do. Yeah, me too.

Jim Bennett [02:22:03] I do.

John Dehlin [02:22:03] Me too.

Jim Bennett [02:22:05] That said.

John Dehlin [02:22:08] Yeah. We don't know what it's like to be them. Right.

Jim Bennett [02:22:11] Well, I had a really fascinating conversation with it with a openly gay member of the church recently, and I asked him, how do you do this? You know, how do you. Because. And one of the things he said is that he says, I believe they're prophets, seers, and revelators, because I don't think Dallin Oaks would say black lives matter unless God made him say that. You know, and he wasn't talking in terms of bat phone to God that, you know, any of that kind of stuff. But I look at the. I really feel it's necessary to grant Dallin Oaks the grace of understanding that I want him and the church and the Lord to grant to me. So as I sit here, I get uncomfortable. Not because I'm trying to preserve my membership, quote unquote, or I'm scared. I really feel like being a disciple and being a member of this church, Part of that process is sustaining leaders who've occasionally, and sometimes very often, I don't agree with or I don't particularly like. Remember my uncle saying, he says, I sustain Ezra Taft Benson as a prophet. I don't like him at all, you know, but I believe he's a prophet. And this is. He was a Stake president at the time. He said this and all of that kind of stuff, but he didn't say it publicly. He didn't say it on a blog. He didn't say it on your podcast. And I don't know what the consequences would have been had he done that. But.

John Dehlin [02:23:39] But

Jim Bennett [02:23:41] the reason why it's frustrating is because the framework of the church is designed in order for us to put people in leadership positions and sustain them despite their fallibility. And so that puts constraints in terms of how you deal with somebody who is doing things that you don't like in ways. And sometimes they cross lines that require them to be removed from their positions. You know, a bishop who calls me to be a Weblows leader is still acting righteously, even if I think they're doing something wrong. A bishop that is encouraging people to commit adultery needs to be removed because he's doing something really terrible. You know, so you look at this and you say, okay, how do we sustain these leaders and support them and build them? Because part of the challenge of discipleship is accepting the authority of 15 men who are men. I believe I have as much access to God as they do. But they are the ones who are called to manage this church and to run this church on a day to day basis. And they are the ones with the authority that I sustain to be able to do that. And they are going to do that in ways that I do not always agree with. So what do I do? Do I protest against them? How do I deal with that? There is a genuine tension that is built into the system is what I'm trying to say. It's not all just cultural and it's not all just that. These are men that have acted with unrighteous dominion. There have been times when they have, and there have been times when they've done things that are wrong and there have been times when they have crushed people that they shouldn't, wouldn't have crushed. I would absolutely agree with that. But I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater because I think that the way the church is structured and the way that the gospel has always been structured, you know, you look back at ancient Israel and you look at, you know, the children of Israel, and it was always amazing to me as a kid to talk about, these guys were a mess. These guys screwed up this way and sideways and they had manna falling from heaven, they should have known better, all that kind of stuff. The more you look at the dynamic of how the Lord deals with people and how prophets interact, you always have the same kinds of excesses and problems and mistakes in all of these organizations that have existed through history and all of these structures and all of these cultures and all of these tribes. None of this is new. And so when you outline it the way you've outlined it, I bristle a little bit. Not because I'm trying to say you're not telling me the truth. I'm trying to say this is the way it has always been. This is the way humanity functions in and out of the church. And so, yes, the church is getting better. Would the church get better as quickly if you hadn't been pushing back or if these kinds of things, I don't know, but I don't want to say, oh, yes, if it weren't for people who had done these kinds of things, we wouldn't have this kind of openness. I don't see how the Internet, I don't know. If it hadn't. Again, as I said to Jeremy, if it hadn't been you, someone else would have written this for sure.

John Dehlin [02:27:15] That's not what I'm saying, but not saying that it was me. You know, we just filled roles, and if we hadn't have been there, other people would have filled it. I just want to make sure I'm not. I'm not, you know, overinflating anyone's position in history.

Jim Bennett [02:27:28] Right. Well, I mean, but I. I'm happy to give you whatever position in history you want to have. Whenever I stand. Whenever people stand up in church and testimony meeting and say, I know the church is true, I always think to myself, you are misquoting the Lord. Because there is no scripture where the church, where it says that this is the only true church, it says, this is the only true and living church. And that qualification about being a living church is really important to me because the more I've grown and the more I've learned what that means. Living things learn and grow from their mistakes. They learn and grow from their suffering. This is a living church. This church is not identical to the church that existed in 1830 when it was first founded. It has grown. It is a living thing. It is a living creature. And living creatures make mistakes. You can find truth. This is not the only true and living church. We are the Lord's people who have been given a charge by the Lord to make the world better. And to a large degree, we have succeeded. And in many cases we have failed because we are living creatures and this is a living organism. And so I look at that and I just say, anytime anybody gets deeply critical of the church and feels like this church is just so awful, I've got to leave. It breaks my heart that they are in a circumstance where that's the case, because I have found so much in staying in this church, and I feel the church is so much better if people stay even with their doubts and even with all of these kinds of things. Because how else is the church going to change? How else is the church going to grow? And, you know, so I don't know how much we agree there. And I think people are going to watch this and go, jim Bennett's being squishy. And Jim Bennett or whatever else. And I don't. But I just feel like whenever the church is criticized, I don't feel like you're just criticizing Dallin Oaks or Boyd Packer because I am complicit. I am in this church. This is my church. And it is my responsibility as a member of this church to make this church the kind of church that I want it to be, but more importantly, what I think Christ wants it to be. And so to do that, I feel like I have to give grace to those. That's. That's a concept, incidentally, that's been very important to me, the whole idea of grace. You know, in the God Makers, in the book, the God Makers, they beat up on the church because the church never teaches anything about grace. And the one thing Gilbert W. Scharf said in the Truth about the God Makers is, you're right, we don't ever talk about grace in the church. That is something that is changing, but slowly because I think we're so afraid of the idea of grace because we consider it to be sort of a Protestant doctrine or whatever, or we think it detracts from the idea that. Don't think that grace means you don't still have to pay tithing and be goodness. It's, it's, it's permissive. And, and, and to me, I think it's essential. Grace is the element that we have to rely on in and out of the church, up, down and sideways. And I have become very strongly a believer in the idea that no matter what good we do in the church, none of it does any good without grace. Yeah, it is grace that saves us.

John Dehlin [02:31:02] And I think that's a, you know, I think that's a beautiful way to conclude this, this segment, this part one of our interview, because I agree with you. I think ex Mormons need more grace. They need more grace to say that all the brethren are evil or the church is this corrupt, you know, awful, terrible, worthless thing, in my view, is going too far or even regardless of your position, it's not useful. If you want. If your goal is to get as many people to the right place as possible, you're gonna get there by having grace faster. You're gonna get more people to the right place. Whatever the right place is, whatever your right place is, you're gonna get more people there faster, faster with grace than you are with militancy.

Jim Bennett [02:31:50] Right.

John Dehlin [02:31:51] And just unqualified negativity. And so I think that's a great way to kind of end this segment is. Is, I think where we're really in agreement. Let's all have more. Grace. I had a guy reach out to me just today. You know, there have been people smearing me. It's been going on for years. And, you know, he posted some stuff to a group that I minister, and I blocked him. And then he, like, messages me and he says, hey, why'd you block me? And I'm like, you're spreading smears. And I called him, you know what I mean? Because he was all mad at me and he was a donor. And I called him and he's like, well, what are you going to say about all these things that you've been accused of? And I'm like, let me go through all of them. And I, like, spent 30 minutes with them and said, here's my answer to all the claims. And anyway, it was a really. It was a. For me, it was a really beautiful thing because we. I think we reconciled. I think we came to good understandings of each other. But he also told me he's like, One of the things I'm really angry about with Mormon stories is that I feel like it's most effective when it's kind and when it's. When it's balanced. And what I don't want to see, John, is Mormon stories get too angry and too sarcastic and too bitter because I think it's going to lose its effectiveness. And I think that's.

Jim Bennett [02:33:08] I think we are.

John Dehlin [02:33:09] Both. Our sides are going to be more effective when we have more grace.

Jim Bennett [02:33:13] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:33:13] And I think that's a great way to conclude this segment. And I think we can kumbaya around grace.

Jim Bennett [02:33:19] I think we can.

John Dehlin [02:33:20] Can we kumbaya?

Jim Bennett [02:33:21] Sure.

John Dehlin [02:33:22] So thanks for being so graceful.

Jim Bennett [02:33:23] Jim Bennett, thank you for being so graceful. John De Lynn, are you ready for a potty break? Yeah, let's do that.

John Dehlin [02:33:29] So. So really quick, don't go away. We're going to come right back with more. We're going to talk about Joseph Smith, the Book of Abraham, the Book of Mormon. We're going to talk about, you know, the temple, the Masonic ceremonies, and. And, you know, there'll be that whole segment on kind of Joseph Smith and Mormon scripture. And then I think we'll probably end with kind of race. Race stuff in the church and LGBT stuff. And I don't know how long this is going to go, but don't go away. We're going to end this segment now. And we'll be right back with part two of More with Jim Bennett, author of A Faithful Reply to the CES Letter from a former CES employee and son of former Utah Senator Bob Bennett. And a great guy. And. And, yeah, a person that's willing to engage in constructive dialogue. And I'm just super grateful that you're here and that you exist.

Jim Bennett [02:34:25] I am grateful that you exist as well. This is good.

John Dehlin [02:34:29] All right. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you guys soon. Don't go away. Join us for part two.

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